PAYE calculator for South African salaries
Work out the PAYE and take-home pay on a salary for the 2026-27 tax year, with retirement contributions, medical scheme credits and UIF in the working, or switch to annual figures for a refund estimate. It runs in your browser and asks you for nothing.
Monthly PAYE
R4,681
- Gross remuneration for the year
- R360,000
- Taxable income
- R360,000
- Tax on taxable incomePer the SARS 2026-27 tax table
- R73,992
- RebatesPrimary rebate
- -R17,820
- Tax for the year
- R56,172
- UIF, your sideOne percent of salary up to R17,712 a month
- R177.12
- Take-home before scheme premiumsSalary less PAYE and UIF. Medical scheme premiums and other payslip deductions come off separately.
- R25,141.88
Rates verified against SARS on 23 August 2026, for the 2027 year of assessment.
The arithmetic behind the calculator
Employees tax runs on an annualised view of pay. The calculator grosses the salary to a full year, takes off retirement fund contributions up to the section 11F limit of 27.5 percent of remuneration capped at R350,000, and runs the SARS table for the year over the taxable income that remains. The rebates for your age come off that tax, the section 6A medical scheme fees credit comes off month by month for everyone covered on the scheme, and the result divides back to a monthly figure alongside the one percent UIF contribution on remuneration up to its monthly ceiling.
Every line of that working is visible in the result, so a figure that surprises you can be traced to the step that produced it rather than taken on faith.
Rates verified against SARS on 23 August 2026, for the 2027 year of assessment. Estimate for review only. It is a steady-salary estimate rather than a SARS assessment or tax advice, and it excludes travel allowances, fringe benefits, and irregular income such as bonuses, which our bonus tax calculator will cover when it launches.
Common questions
- How is PAYE calculated in South Africa?
- The salary is grossed up to a full year, retirement fund contributions come off up to the section 11F limit, and the SARS tax table runs over what remains. The rebates for your age and the monthly medical scheme fees credit then come off the tax, and a twelfth of the result is withheld from each month’s salary. The calculator shows every one of those steps as a line you can check.
- How much tax do I pay on R30,000 a month?
- For the 2026-27 year, a 35 year old earning R30,000 a month with no retirement or medical inputs pays R4,681 in monthly PAYE. UIF takes another R177.12, which leaves a take-home of R25,141.88 before medical scheme premiums and any other payslip deductions.
- Why is my PAYE different from what this calculator shows?
- Payroll systems annualise pay as the year unfolds, so a raise, a bonus, or an irregular month shifts the withholding, and benefits like a travel allowance or employer medical contributions change the remuneration PAYE runs on. The calculator assumes a steady salary across the year, which is why its figure is an estimate for review rather than a payslip prediction to the cent.
- Will I get a tax refund?
- A refund arrives when more PAYE came off during the year than the final assessment needs, which commonly follows from deductions the payroll never saw: retirement annuity top-ups, out-of-pocket medical costs, or a period between jobs. Switch the calculator to annual income, enter what was actually deducted, and it estimates the difference in either direction.
- Does this calculator store anything I type in?
- No. Every figure is worked out in your browser, and the numbers you type are masked before anything leaves it, so they stay on your own device. There is no sign-up and no email field. Anonymised analytics and an anonymised session replay do run across the site so we can see which pages confuse people, and one click in the footer switches both off.
PAYE is one leg of the payroll compliance month. How the whole cycle fits together, EMP201s included, is in our company tax compliance calendar guide, and C-Suite Commercial runs that cycle for practices in production.
More free SARS tools
- Provisional tax calculator IRP6 payments, business-day-adjusted due dates, the paragraph 20 threshold test and indicative section 89quat interest, for individuals, companies and small business corporations.
- SARS tax tables and thresholds The current income tax brackets, rebates, thresholds and medical scheme fees credits, with a lookup that shows the tax on any taxable income.
One payslip checked, or every client's payroll
This page checks one salary at a time. A practice running payroll for dozens of clients answers the same PAYE questions every month across all of them, and C-Suite runs those checks across a whole client book inside a free one-week pilot on your own clients, so the differences surface before the EMP201 goes in.