"May Have Miscalculated": Cape Town Engineer Expects R30,000 Tax Refund, Gets Bill from SARS Instead
- A Cape Town software engineer shared his shock after SARS told him he owed R30,000 instead of receiving a refund he expected
- The man had worked as a software engineer on contract and taught night classes at an institution before taking on a new role
- South Africans with similar experiences weighed in on Reddit to explain why the bill may not be as surprising as it seems
PAY ATTENTION: Mark Briefly News as a preferred source, and our content will appear higher in your Google feed!
Source: Getty Images
A Cape Town software engineer got an unwelcome surprise when he filed his tax return. Instead of the R30,000 refund he had calculated for himself, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) told him he owed exactly that amount.
The man, known online as u/coolio027, shared his situation on Reddit's r/AskZA community on 17 October 2026. He explained that he had worked two jobs simultaneously for most of the year — a software engineering contract role and a part-time teaching position at a Cape Town institution where he taught night classes a few hours a week. In October, he resigned from both and began a new role, which he is still in.
When he filed in July, he expected a refund. What came back was a bill.
Source: Getty Images
PAY ATTENTION: You can now search for all your favourite news and topics on Briefly News.
Why 3 jobs can leave you owing SARS
He suspected the issue was that SARS had combined all three income streams and placed him in a higher tax bracket, while each employer had only deducted Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) tax based on the individual salary they were paying. Since no single employer knew about the others, none of them had deducted at the correct combined rate.
Reddit users confirmed his suspicion. u/Environmental_Elk461 explained that SARS taxes total annual income, meaning combining all three salaries likely pushed him into a higher bracket than any individual employer accounted for.
u/marny_g broke it down with a simple example: if each of three R100 salaries is taxed at 10% individually, an employer deducts R10 per salary. But SARS sees R300 in total, which may fall into a 15% bracket, meaning the correct deduction should have been R45, not R30. That gap is exactly what gets reconciled at year end.
Others have been caught in the same trap
He is far from alone. u/CourseSilver838 replied saying almost the same thing happened to them, also ending up owing roughly R30,000.
"I sent it through to my tax practitioner and he literally just explained that same thing and bottom line I owe SARS," they wrote, adding that they are now on a payment plan.
View the Reddit post here.
Reddit reacts
Here is what South Africans on r/AskZA had to say:
u/Environmental_Elk461 wrote:
"It sounds like you may have miscalculated. You would pay tax on the total annual income. So even though you paid PAYE on each individual salary based on their amounts, combining all 3 has probably put you in a higher tax bracket."
u/marny_g said:
"When looking at your tax bracket, SARS considers the total, not the parts. So they don't see R100 × 3 jobs. They see R300."
u/Practical-Lemon6993 added:
"This sounds like the most likely scenario."
u/CourseSilver838 shared:
"The exact same thing happened to me. I owe roughly the same for the same reason. They taxed me lower for something and then boom I owe them R30k. So now I'm on a payment plan."
More Briefly News stories on SARS
- SARS is currently pursuing South Africans with tax debts as low as R5,000, while taxpayers receive final notices giving them 10 days to pay or respond.
- SARS has set 23 October 2026 as the deadline for non-provisional taxpayers who were not auto-assessed, with new rules and easier filing tools this season.
- A South African financial advisor says SARS froze his R323,000 tax refund after discovering a small outstanding amount on another tax profile, leaving him stunned.
PAY ATTENTION: Stay informed and follow us on Google News!
Source: Briefly News
