Rental income tax calculator for South Africa
Find out whether the place you let makes a profit or a loss once the costs SARS allows come off the rent, and how much that adds to, or saves on, the tax on your salary for the 2026-27 tax year.
Extra tax from this rental for 2026-27
R12,462
- Rent received
- R96,000
- Shared costs, your share100 percent of the property for 12 months
- -R52,800
- Costs for the letting only
- -R3,000
- Net rental profit
- R40,200
- Taxable income without the rental
- R400,000
- Taxable income with the rental
- R440,200
- Tax without the rentalSARS 2026-27 table, after the rebates for your age
- R67,417
- Tax with the rental
- R79,879
Work out the two provisional tax payments
Your taxable rental profit of R40,200 is more than R30,000, so you will usually be a provisional taxpayer and pay tax in two payments during the year (IRP6) as well as filing your return.
Rates verified against SARS on 27 September 2026, for the 2027 year of assessment. This is an estimate, so have a tax practitioner check it before it goes on a return. It shows income tax before the medical tax credit and other credits, for one property owned by one person, and it assumes you have no loss from another business and no loss carried forward from earlier years, apart from one SARS held back on this property.
Your own browser adds up the rent and costs, and you need no sign-up or email address. Like every page on the site, this one runs anonymised analytics and an anonymised session replay that masks the figures you type, and you can switch both off under Cookie preferences in the footer.
Costs you can and cannot deduct
SARS taxes the rent less the running costs of the part you let. What it costs to keep the place going counts, while money you spend buying it, paying off the bond or improving it does not.
| You can deduct | You cannot deduct |
|---|---|
| Bond interest on a loan used to buy or improve the property | The part of each bond instalment that pays off the loan |
| Rates and taxes, and levies | The purchase price, transfer duty, and the costs of registering the bond and the transfer |
| Building insurance | Contents insurance, bond cover and life cover |
| Repairs that put the let part back to how it was, such as fixing a leaking roof or a broken geyser | Improvements and additions, such as new built-in cupboards or an extra room, which add to what the property cost you and lower the capital gains tax when you sell |
| Agent commission, booking platform fees and advertising | Depreciation on the building itself |
| Garden services, security, and water and electricity you pay for and do not get back from the tenant | Your own share of those costs, for the part of the home you live in |
| Wear and tear on furniture and appliances let with the place, spread over the years SARS sets for each item | Writing off a cheap item in one go, which SARS does not allow for things bought to let out |
If you let part of your home, your share of the shared costs is the floor area you let divided by the floor area of the whole home, garages and outbuildings included, which is the method SARS uses in its own worked example.
The calculator also cuts the yearly costs to the months the place had a tenant, because SARS allows costs for the period a property was let. SARS gives no formula for this, so the split by months is the calculator’s own method. If the place stood empty between tenants while you were advertising it, ask a tax practitioner whether those months count too.
Wear and tear on furniture uses the cash price you paid and the write-off periods SARS sets for items first used from 24 March 2020. For furniture you used yourself before you let it, or first used before that date, ask a tax practitioner, because SARS uses a different value or write-off period for those items.
When a rental loss cannot be used
Most of the time a rental loss lowers the income SARS taxes, and with it the tax on your salary. From the 2026-27 tax year, section 20A of the Income Tax Act can hold that loss back (SARS calls this ring-fencing) once your taxable income before the loss reaches R695,801, where the 39 percent rate starts. The Taxation Laws Amendment Act 5 of 2026 made that change. Before it, the rule only reached people taxed at the top rate of 45 percent, and SARS’s ring-fencing guide from 2010 still describes the old rule.
Once your income reaches that point, SARS holds the loss back in either of these cases:
- the letting has made a loss in at least three of the last five years, counting this one;
- it is a home that people who are not your relatives used for less than six months of the year, or in less than 80 percent of the space, which is always true of a room let in your own home.
A held-back loss stays on record, and you can use it against profit from the same property in a later year.
SARS can still let you use the loss this year if you run the letting as a real business with a reasonable chance of making a taxable profit within a reasonable time. When the calculator holds a loss back, it also shows the tax you would pay if SARS accepts that. For a home that fails the six-month or 80 percent test, that option closes once the property has shown a loss in at least six of the last 10 years.
Tax questions from landlords
- How is rental income taxed in South Africa?
- Your rental profit is the rent that is left once the costs SARS allows are taken off. SARS adds it to your salary and other income and taxes the total on the income tax table, so the profit is taxed at the highest rate your income reaches, somewhere from 18 to 45 percent for 2026-27. For example, a flat let for R120,000 a year with R89,700 of allowed costs leaves a profit of R30,300, and on top of a R480,000 salary that profit adds R9,393 of tax.
- Can I claim a rental loss against my salary?
- Usually you can. The loss is taken off your salary and other taxable income before your tax is worked out, which lowers the tax you pay, and if your employer has already taken PAYE from your salary you can get some of it back as a refund when SARS assesses your return. From 1 March 2026 SARS can hold the loss back once your taxable income before the loss is R695,801 or more. That happens if the letting has lost money in at least three of the last five years, this year included. For a home, it also happens if people who are not related to you lived there for less than six months of the year or used less than 80 percent of it. A held-back loss is kept and used against profit the same property makes in a later year.
- Do I have to pay provisional tax on rental income?
- Provisional tax means paying your tax in two instalments during the year, before SARS assesses your return. If you do not run a business, you only have to pay it when your taxable income is above the tax threshold (the income below which you pay no tax at all, R99,000 if you are under 65) and your taxable rental profit, plus taxable interest, foreign dividends and similar income, comes to more than R30,000 for the year. Anyone who runs a business, including a guesthouse run as one, has to pay it whatever those figures are.
The SARS tax tables show the brackets these figures come from. Rental income sits outside the data SARS builds an auto assessment from, so a landlord still has to file an ITR12 even if SARS issues one, as our guide to the SARS auto assessment sets out.
Waiting on rental schedules from landlord clients?
Working out a landlord client’s rental profit for the ITR12 starts with a rental schedule showing the year’s rent, bond interest, levies and repairs, and that schedule is often the last document a client gets round to sending. C-Suite Individual chases those schedules for every client on a practice’s ITR12 book, along with their IRP5s and their medical-aid and retirement annuity certificates, and sorts each document against the right return for your reviewer. The free pilot runs the chase for one week on clients you pick.
More free SARS tools
- Travel allowance calculator How much of a travel allowance is taxed, using the SARS cost table or your real car costs, and the business kilometres your logbook has to show.