Travel Allowance Updates Effective March 2018

As of the 2018/2019 tax year, the treatment of travel allowances where employees are reimbursed per kilometre travelled for business has changed. 

Previously, the travel allowance was not taxable on the payslip, irrespective of the amount per kilometre reimbursed. However, the travel allowance may have been taxed on assessment.

From 1 March 2018, if an employee is reimbursed at a rate above the prescribed rate, the portion above the prescribed rate is taxable on the payslip. The prescribed rate for the 2019 tax year is R3.61 per kilometre.

There are no changes to the way that you capture the reimbursement on a payslip on SimplePay. We aim to keep you compliant with SARS and therefore SimplePay has been updated to take these rules into account. The system will automatically split the travel allowance into the taxable and non-taxable portion, based on your inputs.

Please note that due to this change, the reporting codes for reimbursive travel allowances used on the IRP5 have also been updated by SARS.

For more information on this, refer to the following help page.