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South Africa plans to roll out a points-based system to
issue work visas as well as permits for people who want to live in the nation
while working remotely for organisations based elsewhere within 30 days.
Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said his department and
the South African Revenue Service have ironed out the tax implications of the
new systems, and he received the regulations for both visa classes on Tuesday.
“A person who is employed and paid in another country
will now be able to move to sunny South Africa to spend all of their dollars,
yen, euros, pounds or renminbi right here,” he said in a speech. Nomad
workers only need to register with the tax agency if they spend more than six
months of the year in the country, he added.
“Our new remote-working visa must be one of the best
deals I’ve ever come across,” the minister said. “South Africa
carries none of the cost of employing these nomads, yet we reap all of the
benefits.”
Schreiber is a member of the Democratic Alliance, which
finished second in May 29 elections that failed to produce an outright winner.
He got one of six cabinet posts allocated to the party after President Cyril
Ramaphosa set up a coalition government.
Under Schreiber’s leadership, the department is overhauling
byzantine visa-application processes that can extend beyond a year and
contributed to a backlog of hundreds of thousands of requests — which has now
been halved. People demanding rulings on their submissions have mired Home
Affairs in lawsuits.
The presidency and the country’s main business organisations
have flagged the regime as a hurdle to economic growth that’s averaged less
than 1% over the past decade — insufficient to cut a 33.5% unemployment rate,
among the world’s highest.
Attracting just 11 000 more tertiary-educated workers
annually would add 1.2% to South Africa’s economic growth rate and increase the
tax take by 1.3% a year, Schreiber said, citing data from the Food Poverty
Research Institute.
“The points-based work visa is going to revolutionise
the South African economy,” he said. “Gone will be the days when
highly skilled workers had no pathway to help build this country if their
skills happened to not be included in an arbitrary critical-skills list.”
