SARS Travel Allowance Claim: The Logbook You Need Before 23 October

You are a sales rep, a technician or an area manager. Your payslip carries a travel allowance, your IRP5 shows it under code 3701, and you are opening your ITR12 on eFiling with a few weeks to go. The travel section asks for your opening and closing kilometres and your business kilometres, and you realise the numbers have to come from somewhere. This page is for that evening: what SARS wants to see, how the claim is worked out, and what to start doing today so next year is easier.

Who can claim a travel deduction from SARS?

You can claim if your employer paid you a travel allowance for using your own car on the job. That is the fixed monthly allowance most people get, or a taxable reimbursement. SARS's own summary of the reimbursement case: “If you have a taxable travel reimbursement code on your IRP5, you may claim a business travel deduction, provided you have kept the required logbook.” If your IRP5 shows a non-taxable reimbursement, there is nothing to claim. It was never taxed.

Three rules decide how big the claim can be:

• Home to work is private. SARS: “travel between your home and place of work cannot be claimed and is regarded as private travel.” However long the drive is.
• The claim cannot exceed the allowance. SARS's travel allowance leaflet says the claim “will be limited to the travel allowance received”.
• No logbook, no claim. In SARS's words: “Without a logbook, you will not be able to claim a travel deduction.”

During the year your employer usually taxes 80% of the allowance through PAYE, or 20% if it is satisfied that at least 80% of your driving will be for business. The logbook is how you get back the part that was really for business when SARS assesses your return.

What does SARS require in the logbook?

From SARS's travel e-logbook page and the 2025/26 eLogbook, the minimum is:

• Your odometer reading on 1 March, the first day of the tax year, and on the last day of February, the last day. The difference is your total kilometres for the year.
• For every business trip: the date, the kilometres travelled, and the travel details: where you started, where you went, and the reason for the trip.
• A separate logbook for each car, if you used more than one during the year.

You do not have to record private trips. SARS says so directly. The odometer readings take care of them: total kilometres minus business kilometres is your private driving.

SARS accepts electronic logbooks. It asks you to keep the logbook for at least five years, because it can ask for it to check your claim. If you claim actual costs rather than the cost table, you also need the receipts, and the lease or instalment sale agreement.

How is the claim worked out with the SARS cost table?

You have two choices. You can add up your actual costs (fuel, maintenance, insurance, licensing, lease payments or wear and tear, finance charges) and claim the business share. Or you can use SARS's cost table, which needs no expense records: only the car's value, your total kilometres and your business kilometres. Most people use the table.

The table gives a rate per kilometre. It is the sum of three parts:

• the fixed cost for your car's value band, divided by your total kilometres for the year, business and private together;
• the fuel cost, only if you paid for all your fuel;
• the maintenance cost, only if you paid for all the maintenance. If a maintenance plan covered it, leave this part out.

The car's value is what you paid for it including VAT, without finance charges. The fixed cost is reduced pro rata if you used the car for business for only part of the year. This is the table for the year you are filing now, 1 March 2025 to 28 February 2026:

Source: SARS Travel Logbook for 2025/26, fixed cost table for the 2026 tax year.

A worked example

Take a rep whose car cost R320,000 including VAT. Her allowance is R8,000 a month, R96,000 for the year. Her odometer read 41,200 km on 1 March 2025 and 71,200 km on 28 February 2026, so she drove 30,000 km in total. Her logbook adds up to 16,500 business kilometres.

• Fixed cost: R111,273 ÷ 30,000 km = R3.7091 a km
• Fuel: R1.914 a km (she paid for all her fuel)
• Maintenance: R0.714 a km (she paid for all the servicing)
• Rate: R6.3371 a km × 16,500 business km = R104,562

That is more than her R96,000 allowance, so the claim stops at R96,000. If her car had been on a maintenance plan, the rate would drop to R5.6231 a km and the claim would be R92,781.

Notice what drives the result. The fixed cost is spread over total kilometres, and the business kilometres multiply the rate. Both numbers come from the logbook and the two odometer readings, which is why SARS will not accept a claim without them.

When is the simplified R4.76 rate the right one?

SARS also publishes a single rate per kilometre: 476 cents for the 2025/26 year and 495 cents from 1 March 2026. It is not a shortcut for everyone. It applies only if your employer reimbursed you for the business kilometres you actually drove, and paid no other allowance or reimbursement for the car apart from parking and tolls. If that is you and your employer paid at or below the rate, the payment is not taxed and you normally have nothing to claim.

If you receive a fixed monthly travel allowance, the simplified rate is not yours to use. Use the cost table or your actual costs.

When is the 2026 filing deadline?

Source: SARS Filing Season page, checked 28 September 2026.

If SARS auto-assessed you in July and you did not claim your travel, the assessment will not include it. SARS says that if you do not agree with an auto-assessment you can edit the return and file it by the filing season deadline. If you need to claim, do it before 23 October.

What changes for the 2026/27 year you are driving in now?

The next tax year started on 1 March 2026 and ends on 28 February 2027. You will file it in the 2027 filing season. Three things are already different:

• New cost table. For years starting on or after 1 March 2026 the value bands moved. The first band now goes up to R115,000, and a car worth R320,000 falls in the R230,001 – R345,000 band: R98,689 fixed, 161.2c fuel, 67.8c maintenance.
• Simplified rate of 495 cents a kilometre.
• Your opening odometer reading was due on 1 March 2026. If you did not write it down, look for the nearest record you have, such as a service invoice that shows the odometer, and ask your tax practitioner how to treat the gap. Then keep the logbook from today, not from February.

Seven months into the year, rebuilding the trips you have already driven is much easier now than it will be next July. Your calendar, your client visits and your emails still say where you went.

Keeping a SARS logbook in TaxMiles

TaxMiles is an iPhone mileage tracker. It has a South African scheme: kilometres, rand, and a tax year that runs from 1 March to the end of February. It uses your iPhone's region by default. You can check or change it in Settings → Tax Region.

• Each drive is recorded automatically: date, distance, and the place where it started and ended. You mark each trip as business or personal and add the reason, such as “Client visit, Menlyn” or “Stock delivery to Centurion branch”. That covers the date, kilometres and travel details SARS asks for.
• Past trips can be added by hand with Add → Manual Trip, for the months before you installed it.
• The Odometer Log (Taxes tab → Tax Toolkit) stores your readings with a dashboard photo and shows your business-use percentage against the kilometres you tracked. With notifications on, it reminds you on the last day of February and on 1 March.
• Export the trip list as a CSV with the date, from, to, purpose, category and kilometres for your practitioner or your own cost-table sums.

The free plan covers 40 completed trips a month and one summary PDF per tax year. The summary gives totals, not the trip-by-trip list. The per-trip exports (the detailed PDF log and the CSV) are part of TaxMiles Pro.

What TaxMiles does not do for South Africa

• It does not apply the SARS cost table. The rand figure TaxMiles shows for South Africa is your business kilometres times the simplified rate (R4.76 for 2025/26, R4.95 from 1 March 2026). If you receive a fixed allowance, that is not your claim. Take the kilometres from TaxMiles and do the cost-table sum above, or give the log to your practitioner.
• It does not track actual costs for a SARS claim. It has no wear-and-tear schedule, finance-charge split or lease record for SARS.
• It does not file your ITR12 or connect to eFiling. You type the figures in yourself.
• It does not remind you of the SARS filing deadline. SARS announces the dates each season, so the app does not guess them.
• CSV dates are month/day/year, not the day/month/year order you might expect. Check one row before you send it.
• It only knows the kilometres it recorded. Your total kilometres must come from the odometer, not from the app. Private driving with the phone at home never reaches the app.

Who this is not for

• Employees with a company car. A logbook can reduce the fringe benefit on a company car too, but that is a different calculation. Ask your payroll department.
• Employees reimbursed per kilometre at or below the SARS rate. Your reimbursement was not taxed. Check your IRP5 before you do any of this.
• Sole proprietors. You claim the business share of your actual vehicle costs against your business income, not against a travel allowance. You still need the logbook. The cost table above does not apply to you.
• Android users. TaxMiles is iPhone only. The free SARS eLogbook PDF works on paper.

Frequently asked questions

Can I claim the drive from home to the office?

No. SARS treats travel between your home and your place of work as private travel, however far it is. Only the business trips you record in the logbook count.

What if I did not keep a logbook for 2025/26?

SARS says that without a logbook you will not be able to claim a travel deduction. If you have genuine records made at the time, such as a work diary, client invoices or delivery notes, a tax practitioner can tell you whether they are enough. Do not invent trips. Start a logbook for 2026/27 now.

Can I claim more than my travel allowance?

No. SARS's travel allowance guidance says the claim is limited to the travel allowance received. If the cost-table figure comes out higher than your allowance, you claim the allowance amount.

Can I use the R4.76 simplified rate instead of the cost table?

Only if your employer reimbursed you for the business kilometres you actually drove and paid no other allowance or reimbursement for the car apart from parking and tolls. If you receive a fixed monthly travel allowance, you use the cost table or your actual costs.

Does SARS accept a logbook kept in an app?

Yes. SARS says it accepts electronic logbooks. Keep it for at least five years, because SARS can ask for it to verify your claim.

Does TaxMiles work out my SARS travel claim?

No. It records the logbook: dates, kilometres, where you started and ended, the reason, and your odometer readings. It does not apply the SARS cost table or file your ITR12. The rand figure it shows is business kilometres times the simplified rate, which is not your claim if you receive a fixed allowance.

Sources: SARS Travel e-logbook page and the 2025/26 SARS eLogbook (cost table and 476c rate); SARS travel allowance leaflet (claim limited to the allowance); SARS Rate per Kilometre Schedule (2027 tax year) (495c and the new bands); SARS FAQ on reimbursive allowances; SARS Filing Season page. Checked 28 September 2026.

Related reading: business miles vs commuting miles (the home-to-work rule works the same way in most countries), the odometer photo habit, rebuilding a mileage log from real records, and mileage deductions in the UK, Canada and Australia.