Confirming the 2026/27 tax table before payday
Why a South African employer must start and confirm its own 2026/27 tax table in Achekam before any pay run dated from 1 March 2026, and what to check.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Running a business businesses in South Africa
You set up payroll in Achekam, add your employees, enter this month's overtime and press calculate. The run is refused, because there is no confirmed tax table for the pay date.
Nothing is broken. Achekam will not work out anyone's PAYE from figures that nobody at your business has checked, and for pay dates from 1 March 2026 there is no table yet that anyone could have checked: you have to make it. This article explains why, and walks through starting, updating and confirming your 2026/27 table.
Why tax tables are data a person confirms
Achekam's PAYE calculation has no tax rates written into it. South African PAYE, UIF and SDL come from a tax table stored as data, and a pay run is refused until a named person confirms that year's table.
Achekam ships its payroll tax tables pre-loaded but unconfirmed. Confirming one creates your business's own copy, and no payroll run uses a table until a named person at your business has confirmed that copy. The shared table stays unconfirmed for everyone else. When someone confirms, they record a note of what they checked.
Why so strict? Because a wrong bracket or rebate does not fail loudly. It quietly under- or over-deducts tax from every employee, every month, until the year-end reconciliation shows a difference nobody can explain. Making a person look at the figures, and putting their name and note on the confirmation, is the cheapest protection there is.
Only the 2025/26 table ships, unconfirmed
A South African tax year runs from 1 March to the last day of February and is named for the year in which it ends. So the 2026 tax year ran from 1 March 2025 to 28 February 2026, and the 2027 tax year, the one people call 2026/27, started on 1 March 2026.
Only the 2025/26 South African table ships with Achekam, and it ships unconfirmed. No 2026/27 table ships. For payroll paid on or after 1 March 2026, a business must start its own 2026/27 table, update it to SARS's figures and confirm it before running payroll.
If your business has been running payroll in Achekam since before March 2026, someone has already done this, or your March runs would have been refused. If you are new to Achekam, it is the first job before your first run.
Starting 2026/27 from last year's figures
You do not start from a blank page. Achekam lets you begin the 2026/27 table from the 2025/26 figures. That gives you every field in the right place, filled with last year's numbers.
The danger is obvious: a table started from last year's figures is last year's table until someone changes it. Starting the table is not confirming it, and it should never be treated as if it were.
Updating to SARS's figures and confirming
Work through the table against SARS's published rates for the tax year ending in February 2027. SARS's Guide for Employers in Respect of Employees' Tax (2027) gives the individual tax tables, rebates and thresholds for the 2026/27 tax year and explains how employers must deduct PAYE. The South African calculation uses these parts of the table, so these are the parts to check:
| Part of the table | What to compare it with |
|---|---|
| Tax brackets | SARS's income tax rates for individuals for the year |
| Age rebates | The primary, secondary and tertiary rebates for the year |
| Medical tax credits | The monthly credits for the main member and dependants |
| Retirement-contribution deduction limit | The limit that applies for the year |
| UIF ceiling | The earnings ceiling for UIF contributions |
| SDL exemption | The payroll level below which SDL does not apply |
While you are in the table, enter the minimum wage per hour for the year if you claim the Employment Tax Incentive. The incentive is worked out per qualifying employee per month only once that figure is on the table.
Then confirm. Write a note that someone else could follow: which SARS document you compared against, on which date, and anything you were unsure of. If two people are available, let one update the table and the other check it before it is confirmed.
What the calculation then applies
Once confirmed, the table drives every run with a pay date in the tax year. The South African calculation applies the tax brackets, age rebates, medical tax credits and the retirement-contribution deduction limit, caps UIF at the ceiling and applies the SDL exemption, all from the confirmed table.
So the quality of every payslip this year depends on the care someone took checking those figures. If SARS changes a figure during the year, your table has to reflect it before the next run it affects; keep a note of what changed and who confirmed it.
Before your next payday
- Open the tax tables and look for a confirmed 2026/27 table.
- If there is none, start one from the 2025/26 figures.
- Update each part listed above to SARS's figures.
- Add the minimum wage per hour if you claim the incentive.
- Confirm, with a clear note of what you checked.
Your tax table feeds everything that follows, from the monthly declarations to the certificates at year end; see year-end IRP5, IT3(a) and the EMP501 reconciliation and UIF declarations, UI-19s and the COIDA return. Employers with staff in Nigeria face a similar confirmation step there, with an extra decision about pensions; read the pension decision before your first Nigerian payroll.
Check the table today, not the day before payday. A refused run with staff waiting to be paid is a bad time to be reading SARS's rate tables.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
