TaxTim and SARS use all the financial information you provide to work out the most accurate estimate of your potential refund (or tax liability) for the current tax season. However, there may be some information we don’t have access to that won’t be included in the estimate of your tax refund or tax liability.

Information from previous tax seasons

Just like the SARS eFiling tax calculator, TaxTim doesn’t take into account provisional tax payments, unpaid penalties, carry-over amounts from previous years and assessed losses.

Our calculator does NOT account for:

• Rental and investment income split between partners due to Marriage in Community of Property
• Business profits allocated within a partnership
• Rental income allocation based on a variable partnership percentage
• Distributions from a trust
• Foreign tax credits
• Apportionment for the foreign employment exemption

Conservative approach

We take the conservative approach with regards to rental losses and local business losses by assuming that SARS will ring fence these losses and not allow them to be deducted from your other income e.g salary. We would rather give you the 'worst case scenario' view,  so that you are pleasantly surprised by a larger refund (or lower tax liability) should SARS choose not to apply the ring-fencing provisions to your business loss or rental loss.

The lumpsum gratuity (source code 3901) may be taxed as normal income subject to PAYE or it may be taxed according to the special tax tables for lumpsum. Again, we take the conservative view and assume that PAYE will be withheld however there is a chance that SARS will tax this lumpsum per the more favourable tax rates for lumpsums. If this is the case, our refund estimator will show that you owe more tax than that reflected in your assessment.

Medical and interest

If you are 65 or older, or disabled, then any amount displayed to you as a refund may also be less than the final result after we have filed with SARS, due to the more beneficial medical tax rebate available to you.

If you contributed to a medical aid on behalf of a dependent where you are not the main member, we don't take this into account either. 

Finally, our calculator does not take into account the increased interest exemption for taxpayers aged 65 and older, which equals to an amount of R34 500. 

TaxTim's tax calculation may differ from SARS

For these reasons, any pre-submission calculation may not always 100% match your final ITA34 assessment from SARS. Please keep in mind that the TaxTim tax calculator results are not intended to calculate any tax legally due to you, or legally owing by you. Therefore, using us to file does not mean you will necessarily receive the exact amount we have calculated.  We are simply using your data that you provided to work out the most accurate estimate of your potential refund (or tax liability) for the current season.

In case you are worried that submitting through TaxTim means your refund could be less than if you submit via eFiling directly, you can be rest assured that we send all your information to SARS exactly as you capture it in our system and that the only legal amount owed to you, or by you, will always be shown on your ITA34 (assessment) once it is issued by SARS.