The legal profession has cornered and snooker us with this debt collecting business.

It seems that if the outstanding is less than about R8,000 then you are throwing good money after bad. The attorney's I saw last week were using a guide of allowing for double the debt under R10,000. So if you wanted to collect say R5,000 then you should allow for R10,000 to collect less what what they could recover from the debtor. Ridiculous scenario. They prefer you go to the small claims court rather than process piddly amounts.

This is another area gets me - commissions and percentages on moving target amounts. I term it the parasite paradigm.

It takes the same amount of effort to collect R1 as it does R10,000. Greater amounts may or may not have more complications but this is rare - the basics are usually the same. So why should there be a percentage game applied to the numbers plus a charge for opening files, correspondence and petty's (and they know how to sting you in this area)? Rather a fixed tariff based on the amount to be collected applied by the legal profession across the board. This way everybody knows the score up front.

It's the same for selling houses - we play the estate agents commission game and then despite rising house prices they want an increase in the percentage applied. Same for the transfer duties. Same now for the rates and taxes. No wonder we apparently have the most expensive house transfer administration costs in the world.

Fixed tariffs across all transactions - from tax to houses to attorneys - would help sort out the inflation scenario and help the guys who want to stretch and do something to better themselves in the world and would help those planning their financial lives.