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Tax Take-On Balances

Take-on balances can only be entered for employees whose appointment date does not fall within your first payroll period and where this period is not the first one of the tax year (i.e in March). Entering these balances allows SimplePay to generate complete bi-annual filing submissions (IRP5s) for your employees. The balances can also be used to calculate payslip tax going forward, depending on the tax total method selected. These balances can be captured individually or in bulk.

Please note: For our system to generate the required filing documentation and tax certificates for bi-annual filing, there must be at least one finalised payslip on SimplePay for that financial period. Therefore, if you are backdating to a previous financial period, you would create a pay frequency starting in February of that financial period, enter the tax take-ons, duplicate and then finalise the February payslip. This will prompt the system to use the February payslip and tax take-on values to generate the filing documentation for that financial period.

Tax Total Method

The tax total method determines whether or not the employee’s take-on balances are included for the purposes of performing the payslip tax calculation. SimplePay uses SARS’s cumulative tax calculation and we recommend including the take-on balances in this calculation to achieve the most accurate results by the end of the financial year. More information on the tax calculation can be found in the following help page:

Selecting “IRP5” as the tax total method will tell the system to include the take-on balances in the tax calculations going forward whereas selecting “None” will cause them to be excluded. As mentioned, we generally recommend the first option.

Please note: The take-on balances will be included in the employees’ IRP5s irrespective of which of the above methods are chosen.

Adding Take-On Balances Individually

Take-ons can be added / edited individually for each employee as follows:

  • Go to the employee’s profile and click on Edit Info > Take-On Balances > Edit Balances.
  • Select the tax total method (as discussed above).
  • Enter the relevant totals in the boxes for the corresponding code(s). Note that certain take-ons require more than one input – please see below.
  • Select the Retirement Funding Income determination, if applicable.
  • Complete the ETI section, if applicable.
  • Click Save.

Adding Take-On Balances in Bulk

Take-ons can also be entered in bulk by going to Employees > Bulk Actions > Take-On Tax Totals and entering the relevant totals for each employee in the corresponding columns. Please see the note below on codes requiring multiple inputs.

RFI and ETI information cannot be entered this way currently and will need to be captured individually as indicated above, if necessary.

These balances can also be uploaded using an Excel template, which can be downloaded from this page. This is discussed in greater detail in the following help page: