Update: 1 March 2024

The Minister of Finance has since approved a new table outlining the rates per kilometer for motor vehicles for the 2025 tax year. The applicable rate has been fixed at R4.84 per kilometer with effect from 1 March 2024.

Original Blog Post

On 21 February 2024, the National Treasury presented South Africa’s 2024 Budget Speech. Individual taxpayers will be pleased to learn that there will be no major tax proposals implemented this year, nor have any changes been made to personal income tax tables, rebates and thresholds. 

In this blog, we’ll briefly take a look at the minor announced changes that will affect your payroll.

Subsistence Allowances

Where an employee is entitled to a subsistence allowance, the daily amount in respect of meals and incidental costs will increase from 1 March 2024:

• The allowance granted to pay for incidental costs only will increase from R161 to R169 per day.
• The allowance granted to pay for meals and incidental costs will increase from R522 to R548 per day.

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) did not adjust the subsistence allowance for expenditure incurred outside of the Republic of South Africa this year. 

Budget Highlights

No changes have been announced to the personal income tax brackets and rebates. In addition to this, the medical aid tax credits have also not been adjusted this year.

We’d like to remind you that there is no need to complete a manual year end, as might be common in other payroll systems, and you can simply continue processing payslips into the new tax year. When you need to do your filing, the system will show the correct tax period by default and the relevant documents will be generated. For more information, please take a look at our help site.

As always, our team will implement the necessary changes to our system timeously to ensure that your payroll remains compliant with the tax changes. From 1 March 2024, your payroll will automatically meet all the requirements for the 2024/2025 tax period. If you are still processing payroll for the previous tax year, our system will continue to apply the applicable figures.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to our friendly Support Team at support@simplepay.co.za. 

Related Links:

• 2024 Budget Speech
• Budget Speech Highlights
• SARS Tax Pocket Guide 
• SARS Tax Rates
• SARS Medical Aid Tax Credits
• SARS Subsistence Allowances and Advances
• SARS Rates per Kilometer

Equally, if you are not yet using SimplePay, but would like to, why not check out our website? Or, better yet, try out our service for free with our 30-day trial; get acquainted with our user-friendly service by reading our getting started page, or take our free online course. 

Keep well.

Team SimplePay