Former finance minister Tendai Biti has denounced the Mnangagwa government’s new presumptive tax regime, warning that Zimbabweans are now “the most taxed people in Africa” and risk being suffocated by punitive levies.
Through Public Notice 51 of 2025, the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) announced new presumptive tax scales for the informal sector, restating provisions already contained in the Finance Act of 2024 gazetted on October 24 last year.
The taxes hit informal traders, small-scale miners, taxi and commuter omnibus operators, driving schools, hairdressers, cross-border traders, bottle stores and restaurants.
They range from 10 percent of rentals to monthly payments of up to US$500. Hairdressers must pay US$5 per chair per month, while cross-border traders are forced to surrender 20 percent of the duty value of their imports.
Biti slammed the measures as “absurd” and regressive.
“Before the rebasing of the economy, taxes were 30 percent of GDP – double Africa’s average – making Zimbabwe the most taxed African country. At any given time, the average Zimbabwean pays at least 15 different types of taxes and levies,” Biti said.
He listed PAYE, corporate tax, VAT, the IMMT, fuel levies, carbon tax, AIDS levy, excise duties, toll fees, vehicle licences, stamp duty, customs duty, capital gains tax, council rates and NSSA contributions among the burdens already choking citizens.
Biti said the government was substituting excessive taxation for real economic policy.
“This ideologically vacuous regime sees taxes as an antidote to its reckless expansionary fiscal policy.
But high, regressive taxes punish working people and small businesses, leaving them with no disposable income. Low disposable incomes underpin a crisis of under-accumulation, which is the basis of any recession,” Biti said.
He said the country was trapped in “a vortex of self-induced contradictions” where growth had been “sacrificed on the altar of artificial stability” through punitive taxation, a tight monetary policy and a mismanaged exchange rate.
Biti urged the scrapping of levies such as the IMMT and presumptive taxes, arguing that informality cannot be taxed out of existence.
“The answer lies in growing a broad, formal economy that is inclusive. It lies in providing capital for start-ups and SMEs, encouraging registration, building databases and digitisation – the kinds of reforms Hernando de Soto wrote about two decades ago. High taxes only fuel avoidance and evasion,” he said.
