Salary & Income Tools

Understanding every rand of your salary

Your payslip has more going on than it looks

Between PAYE, UIF, medical aid credits, retirement contributions and the occasional bonus or overtime payment, very few South Africans have a completely clear picture of how their gross salary becomes their actual take-home pay. These seven tools break down every part of that journey.

The seven ways your income gets calculated

• Salary after tax — your full take-home pay, accounting for every standard deduction.
• PAYE — exactly how much income tax you pay to SARS and why.
• Gross to net — turning a job offer's headline number into what actually lands in your account.
• Bonus & 13th cheque — how much of a bonus payment you genuinely keep.
• Overtime pay — your extra hours calculated at the correct BCEA rates.
• Commission — earnings from a base-plus-commission structure.
• Hourly wage — converting an hourly rate into a full monthly and annual picture.

Why understanding this matters beyond curiosity

Every other financial decision — what you can afford, how much you should save, whether a job offer is genuinely better — starts from knowing your real take-home pay. Get this number right first, and every calculator on the rest of this platform becomes far more useful.

How these seven tools connect to the rest of your finances

Your take-home pay is the input for almost every other financial decision you will make — what you can afford to spend on housing or a car, how much you can realistically save, and whether a job offer genuinely improves your position. Once you know this number precisely, our affordability and wealth-building tools become far more accurate.

If your income includes variable components like commission, overtime or an annual bonus, use those specific calculators alongside the main salary calculator to build a complete, realistic picture of your yearly earnings — not just your base salary.

Your salary is the foundation every other financial decision rests on

Before you can meaningfully plan a budget, evaluate an affordability question, or set a savings target, you need an accurate picture of what you actually earn after tax. This category exists to answer that foundational question precisely, across every common way South Africans are paid.

Why "salary" means different things to different people

A salaried employee, an hourly contractor, someone earning commission, and a freelancer each need a different calculation to arrive at an accurate take-home figure — the deductions, the variability, and the tax treatment differ meaningfully between them. This category covers each scenario specifically, rather than forcing every income type through one generic calculator.

The seven tools in this category, and when to use each

• Salary calculator: your complete take-home pay including medical aid, retirement and travel allowance
• PAYE calculator: a focused look at just your income tax liability
• Gross to net / Net to gross: converting between the two directions, useful for negotiations
• Bonus calculator: understanding tax on a bonus or 13th cheque specifically
• Overtime and commission calculators: for variable and additional income types
• Hourly wage calculator: converting an hourly rate into a full income picture

Getting the accurate number is the first, most important step

Every other calculator on this platform — affordability, wealth building, budgeting — assumes you already know your accurate take-home income. Getting that number right here is what makes every downstream calculation genuinely reliable, rather than built on a rough guess.