SARS Diesel Rebate Calculator (South Africa)

Both, and farmers hear it both ways. SARS's own legislation and policy documents call it the diesel refund, under the Diesel Refund Scheme and rebate item 670.04 of Schedule 6 to the Customs and Excise Act. Out in farming and accounting circles it is almost always called the diesel rebate instead, and SARS itself uses that word too, since the mechanism is technically a rebate of the fuel levy and Road Accident Fund levy already folded into the diesel price, not a refund of the diesel itself. This calculator, and this page, use both terms for exactly that reason.

Before 1 April 2026, on-land primary sector users, farming, forestry and mining, could claim a refund on only 80 percent of their eligible diesel purchases. From 1 April 2026 that moved to 100 percent, under rebate item 670.04 of Schedule 6 to the Customs and Excise Act. SARS confirmed the change would first show up in practice on the April 2026 VAT return, which is filed in May 2026, which is exactly why so many farmers' first 100 percent return also needs the March litres adjusted onto the new footing, see the next question.

If your VAT period covers both March and April 2026, your March litres were bought under the old 80 percent rule and your April litres under the new 100 percent rule. SARS's own policy, SE-DSL-02, does not let you just add the two months together as they stand, the March litres first have to be scaled by a factor so they sit on the same footing as April's, then the two are combined and the current rate applied once to the combined eligible total. The Split tab above does exactly this and shows every step, including SARS's own published worked example reproduced to the rand.

For 2026 that is the normal case, not the exception. The on-land rate changed on 1 April, 6 May, 3 June and 1 July, so a two-month period covering May and June 2026 contains two changes, and a six-month Category D period, the category reserved for farming enterprises under R1.5 million turnover, running March to August 2026 contains four. Handle it one change at a time. Enter your two earliest stretches of the period on the Split tab, then press the button that carries the combined result into the Before box and enter the next stretch on the right. Repeat for each change. This works because the combined figure the tool produces is already expressed on the later rate's footing, so it can be fed straight back in. Be aware of one thing though: SE-DSL-02 itself works through a single rate change and does not publish a method for a period containing several, so applying its factor one change at a time is that same arithmetic extended rather than a separate SARS-published method. It comes within a few litres of scaling every stretch onto the final rate in one pass, across 200,000 randomised three and four stretch tests the two routes never differed by more than 4 litres, roughly R15. If the claim is a large one, have your accountant confirm the approach. What you should not do is lump several stretches together under a single rate and hope, on a realistic three-stretch 2026 period that guess lands anywhere from about R1,100 under to R3,000 over.

The one in force at the end of the claim period you are filing for, not the one in force on the day you sit down to do the sums. Those are the same thing when you file on time, and different when you file late or correct an old return. If you are working out a March and April 2026 period in August, the rate that gets applied to the combined litres is April's, not July's. The rate dropdown marks the newest rate on record as (current) purely so you can find it quickly, it is not a recommendation to select it.

Diesel bought and used by the same VAT-registered vendor for a qualifying on-land activity, farming, forestry or mining, that the vendor's own logbook can support. Diesel used for something outside that, carriage of goods for reward on a public road is SARS's own example of a non-eligible use, is excluded. This calculator does not make that judgement call for you, it takes the totals your logbook already gives you and works out the rand value SARS's method produces.

From 1 Jul 2026 it is 382.2 cents per litre for on-land farming, forestry and mining, made up of a fuel levy portion and a Road Accident Fund, RAF, levy portion, both published in the Government Gazette. The RAF portion currently sits at 225.0 cents per litre, with the fuel levy portion making up the rest. One thing worth knowing if you compare the table below against the Gazette yourself: the fuel levy figure shown for on land is much smaller than the general fuel levy you actually pay at the pump, because on-land users get 40 per cent of that levy back against 100 per cent of the RAF levy. In the June 2025 notice, for instance, the on-land line reads 154,0 cents per litre fuel levy while the offshore line in the very same notice reads 385,0 cents, and 154,0 is exactly 40 per cent of 385,0. The table below quotes each notice's own wording. The rate table shows how this has actually moved through 2026.

Yes. Rebate item 670.04 and Note 6 of Schedule 6 Part 3 group farming, forestry and mining together under the single heading "on land", with identical rates and the identical 100 percent eligible share. This calculator is written for farmers, but the maths is the same one, only the description of the qualifying activity differs.

The 100 percent eligible share, set from 1 April 2026, is a separate change from the fuel levy itself, which the Minister of Finance can adjust, and did adjust several times over that window with a temporary relief that was phased in and then unwound. The combined on-land rate moved from 382.2 cents per litre on 1 April, down to 262.2, then 225.0, then partly back up to 303.8, before returning to 382.2 from 1 July 2026. Every one of those steps was its own Government Gazette notice, all listed in the table below. This is not an annual event you should expect every year, some years the rate does not move at all, but any year it does, the same before-and-after adjustment applies.

Two logbooks, a usage logbook and a storage logbook, that together show the full diesel trail from purchase to use. For storage, each receipt into storage, its date and quantity. For usage, per piece of equipment, the equipment's identification, its opening and closing kilometres or running hours, and the opening and closing litres held. Per fill, the date, place, quantity, and which eligible or non-eligible activity it was used for. SARS requires this, along with your purchase documentation, to be kept for five years from the date of the return, and claims themselves must be submitted within two years of the purchase date.

You need to already be a registered VAT vendor, then apply for the diesel refund itself by completing the RAV01 form on eFiling. Once registered, the refund is claimed through Part C of your ordinary VAT201 return, there is no separate return just for diesel.

A new, standalone Diesel Refund Registration System has been announced, intended to eventually decouple claims from the VAT201 process and add automated validation. As of SARS's own most recent update on it, the new registration system's opening had been pushed back to later than first communicated, and SARS's own current SE-DSL-02 policy, the same one this calculator's method comes from, still describes claims as going through Part C of the VAT201. Some blogs and fleet-software marketing pages already describe the new system as live, that is ahead of what SARS's own published policy confirms, so for now keep claiming through your VAT201 as usual and this page will be updated once SARS's own documents confirm the change.

No. It only works out the rand figure that SARS's own method produces from litres you have already classified in your logbook, so you can check it, or a fleet system's number, against the official calculation before you enter it on Part C of your VAT201 yourself. A "Copy these VAT201 Part C figures" button below your result copies exactly the two numbers, total purchases and non-eligible purchases, that Part C actually asks you to type in, each clearly labelled and written as plain digits so you can enter them without switching back to this page. You still type them into eFiling yourself.