A glass of whisky and a ciggie after a long day is up there on the list of my favourite things.

I’ll have to swap it out for a vape and a sorghum beer soon, though, thanks to an increase in sin tax.

According to Finance Minister Tito Mboweni, in his budget speech on Wednesday, South Africans are going to be coughing up even more for tobacco and alcohol, following yet another increase on sin taxes.

Here’s TimesLIVE:

If you’re feeling the pinch, one option to save money would be to swap your favourite tipple of whiskey or sparkling wine for sorghum beer, which will not be affected by the new increases in excise duty or sin tax.

Excise duty on a can of beer goes up by 12c to R1,74, while a 750ml bottle of wine will have an excise duty of R3,15, which is 22c more.

The duty on a 750ml bottle of sparkling wine goes up by 84c to R10,16, while the duty on a bottle of whiskey increases by R4,54 to R65,84.

The excise duty on a pack of ciggies will go up by R1,14 to R16,66, and will rise by about 64c to R7,80 on an average per cigar.

“Cigarette makers appear to have absorbed most of the increases last year rather than increasing prices. As a result, the excise burden for cigarettes is likely to remain slightly above the target level,” said the Treasury.

To add to the sadness, fuel prices will go up by 29c a litre for petrol and 30c per litre for diesel. So much for that decrease we were all so happy about last December.

Here’s the breakdown of increases at a glance:

Sin tax won’t be the only thing to go up. Social grants are also on the increase.

Social grants recipients will have something to smile about when government increases – albeit not by much – the grants that provide relief to millions of poor households.

…Social grant coverage grows by about 2% per year. Spending on social grants will increase from R162.6bn in 2018/19 to R202.9bn in 2021/22, at an average annual growth rate of 7.6%.

Over the same period, the number of beneficiaries is expected to increase from 17.9-million to 18.6-million. By 2021/22, the old age grant will reach 4-million beneficiaries, according to the Treasury document.

It shows that the child support grant will reach an estimated 13.1-million beneficiaries by 2021/22.

While that isn’t a massive increase, it is good to see more money going to the people who really need it. Now if we could just get out of the perpetual cycle of bailing out our SOEs, maybe we could even up that to a liveable sum.

As for personal income tax – that’s staying pretty much the same:

Get your ciggie and whisky in now, before it’s too late.

[source:timeslive]