Donations Tax Calculator — SA Deposit Gift Guide

How to Use This Calculator

Enter the donation amount — the Rand value of the cash gift, deposit contribution or asset you're giving. Select your donor type: natural person (individual) or non-natural person (company/trust), since the annual exemption differs between the two.

If you've already made other donations this tax year, enter them under prior donations so the calculator only applies the exemption you have left. Tick recipient is my spouse if applicable — this makes the donation fully exempt regardless of amount. The advanced toggle covers the rare case where your lifetime donations since March 2018 already exceed R30 million.

What Is Donations Tax in South Africa?

Donations tax is the tax SARS charges when you give money, property or any other asset away for free, or sell it for less than it's worth. It's most commonly triggered by ordinary family generosity — a parent helping a child raise a house deposit, a grandparent gifting cash toward a first home, or an investor transferring a property to a relative below market value. The gesture is generous, but SARS still treats it as a taxable event once it crosses your annual exemption.

The tax is charged to the donor, the person giving the gift, not the person receiving it. The recipient (the donee) gets the full amount you intended to give — the donations tax is an additional cost that sits with you as the giver, on top of the gift itself. This calculator estimates that cost so you can plan the gift with the real number in mind, rather than being surprised by it later.

The figures used here reflect the current SARS framework for the 2026/27 tax year, including the recently increased annual exemptions. Thresholds and rates can change in the annual Budget, so always confirm the current numbers with SARS or a registered tax practitioner before relying on them for a large gift. This calculator is a planning guide, not tax or legal advice.

The R150,000 Annual Exemption — A Genuinely Bigger Number for 2026/27

Every natural person (an individual, as opposed to a company or trust) can give away up to R150,000 per tax year without any donations tax being due at all. This exemption jumped from R100,000 for the 2026/27 tax year — the first increase since 2007 — which is a genuinely useful change many South Africans haven't caught up with yet. A deposit gift that would have partly fallen outside the old R100,000 exemption may now sit entirely within the new, larger one.

Non-natural persons — companies, close corporations and trusts — get a much smaller annual exemption of R20,000, also increased for 2026/27, up from R10,000 (the first increase since 2002). If you're gifting property or cash out of a business or trust structure rather than personally, this far lower threshold matters a great deal to the tax outcome.

Annual exemptions confirmed for the 2026/27 tax year. The 25% rate applies only to the portion of cumulative donations, counted from 1 March 2018, that exceeds R30 million. Confirm current figures with SARS.

Two Parents, Two Exemptions — Up to R300,000 Tax-Free Together

One detail that catches a lot of families out — in a good way — is that donations tax is worked out per donor, not per gift. If both parents in a household each gift R150,000 toward a child's deposit as two separate donations, that's R300,000 handed over in a single tax year with zero donations tax due, because each parent uses their own individual exemption. The gift needs to genuinely come from two separate donors for this to hold up — a single R300,000 transfer from one parent's account, described afterwards as "from both of us," does not get the same treatment.

This is worth planning around deliberately rather than discovering by accident. If you're using our Deposit Savings Goal Calculator to work out how much a first-time buyer still needs to save, comparing that gap against what two donors can jointly gift tax-free is often the fastest way to close it.

Donations Between Spouses — Always Fully Exempt

Gifts between spouses are treated differently to every other category: they are fully exempt from donations tax, with no ceiling on the amount. A husband can transfer any sum of money or any asset to his wife, or vice versa, without triggering donations tax at all. This is why the calculator skips straight to a zero result the moment the spouse box is ticked — the R150,000 exemption, the 20%/25% rate tiers, none of it applies once the recipient is a spouse.

Who Pays, and When It's Due

The donor is legally liable for donations tax — not the donee. The recipient of a house deposit gift receives the full amount with nothing withheld; the tax obligation sits entirely with the person giving the gift, as an additional cost on top of what they've handed over. This is declared to SARS on form IT144, and payment is due by the end of the month following the month in which the donation was made — a gift made in June needs to be declared and paid by 31 July.

If the donor doesn't pay by that deadline, the donor and the donee become jointly and severally liable for the outstanding tax. In practice, this means SARS can pursue the recipient of the gift for payment if the donor fails to settle it — worth knowing if you're on the receiving end of a large gift and want to confirm the paperwork has actually been filed.

The R30 Million Lifetime Threshold

Donations tax is charged at 20% on cumulative donations up to R30 million, tracked cumulatively from 1 March 2018 onward — not reset every tax year like the annual exemption is. Once your lifetime donations since that date pass R30 million, the rate on the portion above the threshold rises to 25%. For almost every reader gifting a house deposit, this tier is irrelevant — it exists mainly for very large family transfers, business succession gifts and substantial estate planning, which is why the calculator keeps it tucked under an advanced toggle rather than showing it by default.

Donations Tax vs Capital Gains Tax — A Common Source of Confusion

Donations tax and capital gains tax (CGT) are separate taxes that can both apply to the same transaction, which trips a lot of people up. Donations tax taxes the donor for the act of giving; CGT can separately apply if the asset being donated — a property, for instance — has grown in value since the donor acquired it, because SARS treats the donation as a "deemed disposal" at market value. A cash gift toward a deposit only raises the donations tax question. A parent donating an actual investment property to a child can trigger both. Our Capital Gains Tax Calculator covers that second, separate liability in detail.

Worked Example — A R500,000 House Deposit Gift

A parent wants to gift R500,000 in cash toward their adult child's first home. They're a natural person, they haven't made any other donations this tax year, and the recipient is their child, not their spouse:

• Donation amount: R500,000
• Annual exemption (natural person): R150,000
• Prior donations this tax year: R0, so the full R150,000 exemption remains available
• Taxable amount: R500,000 − R150,000 = R350,000
• Donations tax at 20%: R70,000 payable by the parent
• The child still receives the full R500,000 — the R70,000 is an extra cost for the parent, not a deduction from the gift

If both parents structured this as two separate R250,000 gifts instead of one R500,000 gift from a single donor, each would use R150,000 of their own exemption and pay 20% only on the remaining R100,000 each — R20,000 apiece, R40,000 combined, a real saving of R30,000 over the single-donor version of the same total gift.

Buying with a gifted deposit? Get the full step-by-step process. Read the SA Home Buyer's Guide →

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