How many fingers do you have? A hint, when pointing your finger at someone else, you have three pointing back at you, as the adage goes. Want to reconsider your answer once you have finished staring at your hand?

What about the thumb, could it be that, as it is pointing to the sky, it is not considered? Have you ever heard of polydactyly? This is when a baby is born with extra fingers or toes. With polydactyly – a congenital limb malformation – the ‘ten fingers, ten toes’ observation of a healthy baby is not itself quite accurate. The observation of digits is also not accurate, even in the instance of a supposed ‘normal’ baby. Confused? It is said that you are not confused unless you have all the facts. Do you have all the facts?

Consider that your thumb is a digit. So it is technically not a finger. Your thumbs differ from your fingers in that they have only one joint and two phalanges bones, whereas your fingers have two joints and three phalanges bones. Anatomically, your thumb is unique – its position also sets it apart, as it is on the side of the hand and lower than your four fingers.

Speaking about your thumbs, while you might be familiar with the idiomatic phrase ‘the rule of thumb’, you might not be aware of the phrase’s horrid origin, which is associated with the thickness of a beating stick.

Speaking of a beating, just how badly were you battered by the Finance Minister’s National Budget speech of February 21? In hindsight, I should have titled this piece ‘Battered by the Budget’.

The six headline tax proposals in the Budget were: tax increases totalling R15-billion to alleviate immediate fiscal pressures; no inflation adjustments to personal income tax tables, and medical tax credits are provided; excise duties on alcohol will increase by between 6.7% and 7.2%, while duties on certain tobacco products will increase by between 4.7% and 8.2%; no changes to the general fuel levy or the Road Accident Fund levy, resulting in tax relief of about R4-billion; the implementation of a global minimum corporate income tax, with multinational corporations subject to an effective tax rate of at least 15%, regardless of where their profits are located; and producers of electric vehicles will be able to claim 150% of qualifying investment spending as an incentive to aid the transition to new energy vehicles.

Although featuring, their true impact is not that evident. I am, of course, referring to excise duties, which are principally paid on alcoholic beverages, tobacco products, petroleum products, and energy products. An excise duty is imposed on the manufacture, import or sale of both domestic and imported products. It is essentially a fiscal duty, the intention of which is to raise revenue – nothing else.

The seemingly honourable justification for the imposition of excise duties is to remedy externalities. The obvious question is whether these tax proceeds are indeed ringfenced to remedy the externality or simply collected – a fiscal measure. Make no mistake, they are simply a fiscal measure.

The speech alluded to the fact that, with respect to environmental taxes, the carbon tax increased from R159/t to R190/t of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent as of January 1; the carbon fuel levy will increase to 11c/ℓ for petrol and 14c/ℓ for diesel effective from April 3; and a discussion paper outlining proposals for the second phase of the Carbon Tax will be published for public comment later this calendar year.

Hidden deep in the Revenue Trends and Tax Proposals is an increase in the plastic bag levy from 28c/bag to 32c/bag from April 1 and an increase in the motor vehicle emissions tax rate for passenger vehicles from R132/g to R146/g of CO2 emissions per kilometre (CO2 ekm) and the tax rate for double cabs from R176/g to R195/g of CO2 ekm from April 1. Finally, there will be an increase in the excise duty on vaping nicotine to R3.04/mℓ.

As a rule of thumb, expect future excise duty increases.