Which regime costs less for a micro business: turnover tax, SBC tax, or normal company tax.
Cheapest regime
—
Turnover tax
—
SBC tax
—
Company tax
—
Three roads for a micro business, one cheapest
A very small company in South Africa usually has three ways to be taxed, and they are charged on completely different bases. Turnover tax is levied on your sales. The Small Business Corporation, or SBC, scale and ordinary company tax are levied on your taxable profit. Because turnover and profit are not the same thing, the cheapest option flips depending on your margin. This tool puts all three side by side so you can see which one wins for your specific numbers rather than guessing. You enter turnover and taxable profit, and it returns the tax under each regime plus a verdict on the lowest.
This is a decision tool, not a filing tool. It is built for a founder weighing how to structure the business or which election to make, where a few thousand rand of tax a year genuinely matters. The honest answer it often surfaces is that there is no universally cheapest regime, only a cheapest one for your margin and revenue this year.
Why margin decides the winner
Turnover tax charges a small percentage of every rand of sales regardless of whether you made money. The SBC scale starts at zero on the first slice of profit and rises in steps, so it is gentle on modestly profitable small companies. Flat company tax applies a single rate to all profit. The rates this calculator applies are the SARS turnover-tax bands rising from 0 to 3 percent across turnover up to R1 million, the SBC scale, and a 27 percent flat company rate on profit. Each of those is the tool's working assumption, so verify the current bands and the company rate with SARS, the South African Revenue Service, before you act. What is stable is the principle: high margins favour turnover tax, thin margins favour the profit-based regimes.
A R700,000 turnover business making R350,000 profit
Picture a consultancy turning over R700,000 with R350,000 of taxable profit, a healthy 50 percent margin. Turnover tax on R700,000 works out to R5,650 on the scale this calculator applies. The SBC scale on R350,000 of profit comes to about R17,798. Flat company tax at 27 percent on R350,000 is R94,500. The cheapest by a wide margin is turnover tax, precisely because the margin is high, so taxing sales lightly beats taxing a large profit. Now imagine the same R700,000 turnover but only R40,000 of profit: turnover tax stays at R5,650 while the SBC bill collapses, and the verdict would flip.
| Regime | Charged on | Tax |
|---|
The eligibility fine print the tool respects
If you enter turnover above R1 million, the calculator drops turnover tax from the comparison entirely and chooses between SBC and company tax, because the turnover-tax regime is closed above that ceiling. That mirrors reality, but it is not the only gate. To use the SBC scale a company must meet conditions on shareholders, on the share of income from personal service, and on not being an employment company. Turnover tax has its own exclusions. So read the verdict as the cheapest of the regimes you can actually use, then confirm you qualify for it.
A practical way to use the result
Run two scenarios, not one. Enter a realistic year and an off year for the same business, since the regime that wins in a strong year can be the one that stings in a weak one, and you cannot switch freely each year. The frequent error is choosing on a single optimistic forecast. If turnover tax wins only narrowly, the profit-based regimes are often the safer pick because they fall to near zero in a bad year, while turnover tax keeps charging on sales. When the numbers are close, weigh the downside, not just the headline saving, and get a tax practitioner to confirm before you elect.
Can I move from turnover tax back to normal tax later?
You can leave turnover tax, but the rules limit how often you can chop and change, and once you exit voluntarily you are generally barred from re-electing for a few years. That is exactly why a single-year comparison is risky. Treat the election as a multi-year commitment and confirm the current re-entry restrictions with SARS.
Does the SBC scale apply to a sole proprietor?
No. The SBC scale is for qualifying companies and close corporations, not for an individual trading in their own name. A sole proprietor is taxed on the ordinary individual income-tax scale. If you trade personally, the relevant comparison is turnover tax against your personal marginal rates, which is a different calculation from the company comparison shown here.