Are school fees tax deductible in South Africa

Ordinary school fees are not tax deductible in South Africa. Paying for your child's education is a private, domestic expense, and the Income Tax Act does not allow a deduction or credit for it. There is no fee rebate, no per-child schooling allowance, and no way to claim normal school or university fees on your return. Two narrow situations give some relief, and neither is a general deduction: expenditure tied to a learner's confirmed disability, and a bona fide bursary paid by an employer.

If you are asking whether the R60,000 you paid the school this year reduces your tax, the answer for the vast majority of parents is no.

Why ordinary school fees give no deduction

The deduction rules only allow expenditure incurred in producing income, and section 23(a) specifically bars the deduction of private or domestic expenses. School fees for your children are a personal cost of family life, not a cost of earning your salary, so they fall squarely inside that prohibition. This is true whether the school is public or private, and whether the fees are R5,000 or R150,000. Contributions to a school building fund are likewise not a personal tax deduction (they are not donations to an approved public benefit organisation for section 18A purposes just because a school issues a receipt).

Door one: a disability-related claim under section 6B

Where a learner (you or a dependant) has a disability that a registered medical practitioner has confirmed on the SARS ITR-DD form, certain disability-related expenditure can feed into the additional medical expenses tax credit under section 6B. SARS publishes a list of qualifying physical impairment and disability expenditure, and where schooling costs arise as a result of the disability, the qualifying portion is the additional cost attributable to the disability rather than the full fee. Check the current SARS disability list for exactly what qualifies before claiming.

This route is materially more generous than the ordinary medical credit because, where there is a confirmed disability, section 6B gives 33.3% of the qualifying expenditure with no 7.5%-of-taxable-income floor to clear first. It is a credit against tax, not a deduction from income, and it turns on the disability, not on the school being expensive.

Door two: a bona fide employer bursary

If an employer grants a bona fide bursary or scholarship to study at a recognised institution, section 10(1)(q) can exempt it. A bursary to the employee personally can be exempt; a bursary to a relative of the employee is exempt only if the employee's remuneration proxy for the year does not exceed R600,000. Where that R600,000 test is met, the exemption for a relative is capped:

• R20,000 for Grade R to 12 (NQF levels 1 to 4).
• R60,000 for higher education (NQF levels 5 to 10).

Only the amount above the applicable cap is taxable in the employee's hands. If the employee earns more than R600,000, the whole bursary to the relative is taxable. A bursary that is really just salary repackaged through a salary sacrifice does not qualify.

A worked example

Nomsa earns R400,000 a year, which puts her in the 31% bracket (taxable income between R370,501 and R512,800). Her employer gives a R25,000 bursary for her child in Grade 8 (basic education). Because her remuneration is below R600,000, the exemption applies, capped at R20,000 for Grade R to 12.

• Exempt portion: R20,000.
• Taxable portion: R25,000 less R20,000 = R5,000, added to her remuneration.
• Extra tax: R5,000 times 31% = R1,550.

So R20,000 of the R25,000 reaches the school entirely tax-free, and only R5,000 is taxed, costing R1,550. Compare that with Nomsa paying R25,000 of school fees out of her own pocket, where she gets no deduction at all and funds the full R25,000 from after-tax salary. The bursary is the only one of the two routes that carries any tax relief.

Where this fits

The two relief routes each have a fuller home. For the disability side, read medical tax credits and our article on the disability tax credit, and use the medical credit calculator to see how section 6B builds up. For the employer route, the bursary and scholarship exemption sets out the caps in detail.

SARS sources:

• https://www.sars.gov.za/types-of-tax/personal-income-tax/additional-medical-expenses-tax-credit/
• https://www.sars.gov.za/types-of-tax/personal-income-tax/tax-and-disability/
• https://www.sars.gov.za/wp-content/uploads/Legal/Notes/LAPD-IntR-IN-2012-66-Scolarships-Bursaries.pdf
• https://www.sars.gov.za/tax-rates/income-tax/rates-of-tax-for-individuals/