Country guide · South Africa

Without the two annual odometer readings, SARS says you cannot claim at all

The two readings

SARS puts it on the form, with its own exclamation mark: "record your vehicle's odometer reading on 1 March each year…and again on the last day of February… Without these readings, you cannot claim a tax deduction!"

That is the compulsory part. It is also the part that cannot be reconstructed: nobody can work out what the odometer said on 1 March once 1 March has passed, and no amount of per-trip detail substitutes for it, because the figure the claim is built on is business kilometres over total kilometres and only the odometer supplies the total.

The South African tax year runs 1 March to the last day of February, so the two readings bracket it.

The per-trip minimum is three items

Verbatim from SARS's own eLogbook: "The logbook must contain the following minimum information relating to your business travel: • Date of travel • Kilometres travelled • Travel details (where to and reason for the trip)."

That is all of it. The per-trip odometer columns printed on the form are annotated "These fields are not compulsory" — a genuine surprise on a form that has them, and a reason not to abandon a record because those columns are empty.

Private travel need not be detailed; only business travel must. And: "The same minimum information as set out above is also required for company cars." One list, two regimes.

One logbook per vehicle, where more than one was used in the year. Electronic logbooks are accepted.

The rate, and who it is not for

495 cents per kilometre from 1 March 2026, at the recipient's option — and only where "No other compensation in the form of a further allowance or reimbursement (other than for parking or toll fees) is payable". The alternative is the deemed-cost table of s. 8(1)(b)(ii), nine bands by what the car cost.

The mileage limit that used to sit alongside those conditions is gone. SARS says so itself in Interpretation Note 14: "The mileage limit was removed with effect from 1 March 2018 … the simplified method now applies to unlimited business kilometres." The 12 000 km leg still quoted in places was a paragraph of the Minister's annual Gazette notice, not a limb of the section.

A sole proprietor is outside all of it. s. 8(1)(a)(i) applies to "any amount which has been paid or granted during that year by his or her principal as an allowance or advance", and a principal is an employer or the body in relation to which an office is held. A sole proprietor has none, so the deemed-cost table and the fixed rate never engage, and s. 11(a) actual expenditure — apportioned under s. 23(b) and (g) — is what is left.

The company car counts the same distance from the other end

A company car is a monthly charge — 3,5 % of the determined value, reduced to 3,25 % where a maintenance plan was in place — and distance enters only as a reduction: para 7(7) of the Seventh Schedule applies "the same ratio as the number of kilometres travelled for business purposes bears to the total amount of kilometres travelled."

Total again. Para 7(8) goes further and asks for records of private distance, which is the mirror image of what a business log holds.

Five years from submission

Five years from submission of the return, which is a shorter and simpler answer than most countries here manage.

Why an app rather than a notebook

Nothing above requires software; three columns is the least demanding per-trip list on this site. What software changes is the two readings, and they are the ones with a deadline attached.

A logbook is something you fill in when you remember. An odometer reading on 1 March is something you either took that day or did not, and by 2 March it is gone — and it is the one item SARS says the claim cannot survive without.

DriveHub records each drive in the background and asks afterwards which were business. "Year" means 1 March to the last day of February for a South African, on the report and on the review screen, and the two readings print as their own block rather than as columns you have to notice are empty. The report carries the three-item minimum for every row — the date, the kilometres, and where to and why in your own words — and reports per vehicle, which is what one logbook per vehicle asks for.

This page states what SARS's own eLogbook and the Income Tax Act say, and names them so you can check. It is not tax advice. It can't account for your circumstances. Where money is involved, ask your tax practitioner — and bring the logbook.