SARS tax refund calculator
Put in your IRP5, any side income, and the costs payroll never saw, and see whether SARS owes you money or you owe SARS.
Your employer takes PAYE off every payslip, but it works that out from your salary alone. It knows nothing about the retirement annuity you pay by debit order, the specialist bill the medical aid didn’t cover, or the second job you took on in October. The tax return is where all of that meets. This calculator works the year the way a SARS assessment does and shows you every line, for the 2025/2026 tax year filed in the 2026 season, or for 2026/2027.
Can't find your IRP5?
Your employer files it with SARS before it reaches you, so it is usually on eFiling first. The IRP5 guide shows where to look and what to do if an employer never issued one.
Where refunds come from
PAYE is a running estimate. Every month the payroll takes that month’s pay, assumes you will earn the same all year, runs it through the tax tables and withholds a twelfth of the answer. If one employer paid you the same salary for the full year and nothing else happened, that estimate is the final answer and the calculator will show a refund of zero. Refunds come from the things payroll got wrong or never knew about.
A part year. Someone who started a job in September at R30,000 a month has PAYE withheld as if they earn R360,000 a year. They actually earn R180,000 in the tax year, and on the 2026/2027 tables SARS owes them R13,506 of the R28,086 withheld. The same happens to anyone who resigned mid-year and didn’t work again before March.
A retirement annuity outside payroll. Contributions come off your taxable income, so every rand is worth your top tax rate. A R60,000 top-up on a R600,000 salary comes back as R21,600. The deduction for pension, provident and RA contributions together is capped at 27.5% of your remuneration or taxable income, whichever is higher, and at R430,000 a year from 1 March 2026 (R350,000 before). Anything over the limit rolls forward to the next year.
Medical costs. There are two credits. The monthly one for being on a scheme is usually already in your PAYE if your contributions go through payroll. The second, the additional medical expenses credit, is where out-of-pocket costs count, and the rules split by age. If you are 65 or older, or you, your spouse or a child has a disability, you get 33.3% of your out-of-pocket costs plus any contributions above three times the year’s scheme credit. Under 65, those costs, plus contributions above four times that credit, only count once they pass 7.5% of taxable income, and then at 25%. Take a R420,000 salary with R31,500 going to a pension fund and two people on a R5,000-a-month scheme: R40,000 of out-of-pocket costs brings back R8,692, and R5,000 brings back nothing.
Donations. Gifts to a public benefit organisation that gives you a section 18A receipt are deductible up to 10% of taxable income.
Why the answer is sometimes a bill
Two jobs at the same time, or a salary and a pension, will do it. Each payroll withholds as if its pay is all you earn, so each one gives you the full rebate and the lower brackets. On R240,000 from one employer and R180,000 from another, the two withhold R39,960 between them. Tax on the combined R420,000 is R73,617, which leaves R33,657 to pay.
Interest above the yearly exemption (R23,800 under 65, R34,500 from 65) has no PAYE on it either. And if your IRP5 has a travel allowance on code 3701, the calculator taxes all of it, as SARS does when you don’t claim business kilometres from a logbook, while payroll usually withheld on only 80%.
The figures the calculator uses
Taxable income is taxed in slices. The rate on each slice applies only to the part of your income that falls inside it.
| Rate | 2025/2026 | 2026/2027 |
|---|---|---|
| 18% | Up to R 237 100 | Up to R 245 100 |
| 26% | R 237 101 to R 370 500 | R 245 101 to R 383 100 |
| 31% | R 370 501 to R 512 800 | R 383 101 to R 530 200 |
| 36% | R 512 801 to R 673 000 | R 530 201 to R 695 800 |
| 39% | R 673 001 to R 857 900 | R 695 801 to R 887 000 |
| 41% | R 857 901 to R 1 817 000 | R 887 001 to R 1 878 600 |
| 45% | Over R 1 817 000 | Over R 1 878 600 |
| 2025/2026 | 2026/2027 | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary rebate | R 17 235 | R 17 820 |
| Secondary rebate (65 and over) | R 9 444 | R 9 765 |
| Tertiary rebate (75 and over) | R 3 145 | R 3 249 |
| No tax below, under 65 | R 95 750 | R 99 000 |
| No tax below, 65 to 74 | R 148 217 | R 153 250 |
| No tax below, 75 and over | R 165 689 | R 171 300 |
| Medical credit a month, first two people | R 364 | R 376 |
| Medical credit a month, each additional person | R 246 | R 254 |
| Interest exemption, under 65 | R 23 800 | R 23 800 |
| Interest exemption, 65 and over | R 34 500 | R 34 500 |
| Retirement deduction cap | R 350 000 | R 430 000 |
When to file
For the 2025/2026 year, SARS sent auto-assessments from 1 to 12 July 2026. If you weren’t auto-assessed, or you were and this estimate shows SARS missed something, file your return on eFiling or the SARS MobiApp by 23 October 2026. SARS’s advice to people who disagree with an auto-assessment is to file the return as normal, with the extra figures added to what it pre-filled. Provisional taxpayers have until 22 January 2027. The 2026/2027 year is filed in the 2027 season, and SARS announces those dates around June.
A return you should have filed and didn’t can cost you a fixed penalty every month it stays outstanding. The admin penalty calculator shows how much.
What it leaves out
Business kilometres from a logbook, home office costs, a loss from a business or rental, capital gains, foreign income, and retirement or severance lump sums, which are taxed on their own tables. If any of those apply, the estimate will be off, and a practitioner is worth the fee. To check a monthly payslip instead of a whole year, use the PAYE calculator.
This calculator is a guide, not an assessment. Figures checked on 18 September 2026 against SARS’s rates of tax for individuals, the Budget 2026 tax guide and the guide on medical tax credits. Your SARS assessment is the number that counts.