Travel Allowance and the SARS Logbook Rule

A travel allowance is one of the most commonly mis-claimed items on South African tax returns — usually because of one hard rule: no logbook, no claim.

How a travel allowance is taxed

If your employer pays you a travel allowance, only a portion is taxed through PAYE during the year. When you file, SARS compares the allowance you received against the business travel you can actually prove. Prove more business travel, and you may get money back. Prove none, and the full allowance is effectively taxed.

The logbook is not optional

SARS requires a logbook to support any business-travel claim. To hold up, it generally needs:

• Opening and closing odometer readings for the tax year
• Date of each business trip
• Destination and reason for the trip
• Business kilometres travelled

It should be kept as you go, not reconstructed from memory in October. A logbook written up in one sitting after the fact is exactly what gets claims rejected on review.

Business vs private travel

This trips people up constantly: travel between your home and your usual place of work is private travel, not business travel. Business travel is travel undertaken for work purposes — client visits, site visits, travelling between offices.

Two ways to work out the claim

Broadly, you can claim using either actual costs (fuel, maintenance, insurance, licence, wear-and-tear — with records) or the deemed cost tables SARS publishes each year based on your vehicle's value. Either way, the business kilometres from your logbook drive the calculation. Confirm the current tables and rules at sars.gov.za.

What to keep

• Your logbook for the full tax year
• Your vehicle's purchase price or lease agreement
• Fuel, service and insurance records if claiming actual costs
• Your IRP5 showing the allowance

ClaimX reads your allowance off your IRP5, walks you through the logbook figures, and applies them to the right source codes — so the claim you submit is the one you can actually support.