South Africa lost 197,000 registered taxpayers in one year

The National Treasury’s latest data showed that South Africa has lost 196,721 registered taxpayers over the last year.

This information was contained in the National Treasury’s 2026 Budget Review, published on Wednesday, 25 February 2026.

The Budget Review revealed that tax revenue is expected to hit R2.13 trillion in the 2026/27 financial year.

Personal income tax accounts for R844.8 billion, followed by value-added tax at R521.4 billion, and corporate income tax at R364.3 billion.

Given the importance of personal income tax as the government’s largest revenue source, it raises the question of what this tax base looks like.

The National Treasury provided estimates of individuals and taxable income for the 2026/27 financial year.

It showed that South Africa has 14,248,895 registered individuals in the income tax system. This is 196,721 lower than a year earlier.

Registered individuals are people who have been formally issued a tax reference number by the South African Revenue Service (SARS).

This is concerning as South Africa already has a very narrow tax base, with a small number of citizens paying most of the tax.

The 2026 Budget revealed that the top 13% of individual taxpayers pay over 60% of personal income tax, and nearly half of personal income tax is paid by the 7.7% of taxpayers with taxable income above R1 million per year.

In the 2026/27 financial year, South Africa is expected to have 5.9 million registered individuals with taxable income below the income tax threshold.

This is significantly lower than the 6.6 million individuals with taxable income below the threshold in the previous financial year.

Due to above-inflation salary increases, many more people will pay personal income tax in the next financial year.

According to the National Treasury, 8.3 million people will pay personal income tax in the 2026/27 financial year.

This is much higher than the 7.9 million personal income taxpayers in the previous financial year.

It showed that many workers were pushed into higher tax brackets because the government did not adjust its tax brackets in the 2025/26 financial year.

The table below shows South Africa’s personal income tax breakdown based on taxable income over the last two years.