Do students pay tax in South Africa on a part-time or holiday job?

A student pays income tax on the same basis as everyone else: nothing is owed for the year if total taxable income stays below the tax threshold, which is R95,750 for a person under 65 in the 2026 year of assessment. Studying is not a tax status in its own right, so what decides the outcome is the size of your annual income, not your age or whether you are enrolled. A holiday or part-time job paying less than R95,750 for the year attracts no income tax, even where your employer withheld PAYE from each payslip.

That last point is where students lose money. Tax can come off your wages through the year and still turn out not to be owed once the year is totalled up, in which case it is refundable. You get it back by filing a return.

When a student actually owes tax

The threshold is the income level below which no income tax is due. For the 2026 year of assessment (1 March 2025 to 28 February 2026) it sits at R95,750 for anyone under 65. It works out to that figure because of the primary rebate, a flat R17,235 that every individual taxpayer subtracts from their tax. The first bracket taxes income at 18%, and 18% of R95,750 is R17,235, so the rebate cancels the tax on the first R95,750 to the rand.

For a student the rule reduces to two lines:

• Total taxable income for the year at or below R95,750: no income tax due.
• Above R95,750: tax is due, but only on the part above the threshold, and it starts small.

The number that counts is your total income across the whole tax year, added together. Three months of holiday work plus a run of part-time weekends all land inside the same R95,750.

Why PAYE gets deducted anyway

Employers work out PAYE (Pay As You Earn) monthly, and the monthly sum assumes each month's pay repeats for a full twelve months. A student who earns R10,000 in a December holiday month looks, to the payroll system, like someone on R120,000 a year, which sits above the threshold. So PAYE comes off, even though the student works a month or two and finishes the year well short of R95,750.

None of this is an employer error. Monthly PAYE has no way of seeing that the job is temporary, so it withholds as though the pay carries on all year. The gap between what came off your payslips and what you actually owe gets settled when SARS assesses your total income for the year, which it does once you file.

Worked example: a R60,000 holiday job

Take a student who works over the June and December holidays, earning R10,000 a month for six months, so R60,000 in total for the 2026 year of assessment. The employer runs PAYE on each payslip.

What the employer withholds each month, annualising the R10,000:

• R10,000 x 12 = R120,000 (the assumed annual pay)
• 18% of R120,000 = R21,600
• Less the primary rebate: R21,600 less R17,235 = R4,365 annual PAYE
• Monthly PAYE: R4,365 / 12 = R363.75
• Over six months: R363.75 x 6 = R2,182.50 withheld

What is actually due on the real annual income of R60,000:

• 18% of R60,000 = R10,800
• Less the primary rebate: R10,800 less R17,235 = below zero, so the tax is R0

Nothing is owed, yet R2,182.50 came off during the year. The whole R2,182.50 is refundable, and because it is more than R100, SARS pays it out once the return is assessed.

A second case: just over the threshold

Now take a different student who earns R100,000 for the year, a little above the threshold.

• R100,000 sits inside the first bracket (R1 to R237,100), taxed at 18%.
• 18% of R100,000 = R18,000
• Less the primary rebate: R18,000 less R17,235 = R765 tax for the year

That is R765 on R100,000 of income, or under 0.8% of what was earned. Passing the threshold does not tax the whole amount. Only the slice above R95,750 is exposed, and the rebate soaks up the rest.

How to get the over-withheld tax back

Where a return is expected of you, the refund waits until you claim it. You claim it by filing an ITR12, the individual income tax return, through SARS eFiling.

1. Register as a taxpayer and get a tax number if you do not already have one, then register for eFiling.
2. Check your IRP5. Your employer issues an IRP5 showing your income and the PAYE deducted, and sends the same data to SARS, which usually pre-populates your return.
3. File the ITR12 for the 2026 year of assessment. The 2026 filing season opened on 13 July 2026, with a deadline of 23 October 2026 for non-provisional individuals.
4. SARS assesses the return and issues an ITA34. Where the PAYE deducted was more than your real liability, the difference is refunded, paid out where it is more than R100, provided your banking details are right and there is no other debt or outstanding return.

If you are auto-assessed, SARS does the sums from your IRP5 and shows you the result. Check it against your own figures before accepting, particularly if you worked for more than one employer during the year.

Whether you are obliged to file at all depends on your circumstances. If that is unclear, the guide on whether you need to submit a tax return in South Africa sets out the tests, and you can sanity-check any tax figure with the basic income tax calculator.