About Mzansify

Why it exists

The basic SA money questions — what will my take-home be, how much transfer duty on this house, which medical aid plan fits my budget — get answered every day by tools that gate the answer behind a sign-up form, a broker referral, or a quiet third-party tracker. None of that is needed to do the maths.

So Mzansify keeps the maths and drops the rest. It is what a SARS calculator would look like if it cared about the person using it.

What’s inside

Forty-plus calculators across five areas, plus the guides and glossary that explain the terms behind them. If a South African has to put a number into a form to make a financial decision, the form is probably here:

• Tax — income tax and PAYE, medical credits, retirement contributions, capital gains, transfer duty, donations tax, small business and turnover tax, provisional tax, VAT, UIF, wear-and-tear. Multi-year, so you can model the current year or a prior one.
• Medical aid — compare schemes and plans side-by-side, filter by budget and family size, and estimate the GEMS subsidy if you qualify for it.
• Property and debt — bond repayments, vehicle finance with the actual NCA fees attached, personal loans, credit-card payoff.
• Savings and retirement — TFSA limits, compound growth, retirement annuity deductibility, lump-sum tax.
• Guides and a glossary — short, citation-heavy explainers of the words that turn up on a SARS letter.

If you are filing a return, start with income tax. If you are buying property, start with transfer duty. If you are switching medical aids, the comparison tool is where most people land.

How it’s built

Every calculator runs in the browser. There is no server-side calculation, so there is nothing for a salary or an ID number to be sent to in the first place. That is the single most important design choice on the site and the rest follows from it.

The numbers themselves come from primary sources only. Tax brackets come from SARS and National Treasury. Medical aid contributions come from each scheme’s own published member guide. NCA fees come from Schedule 1 of the Act. Where a value is on the page, it can be traced back to a document — the methodology page lists each source.

Mzansify is independent. Not a SARS product, not a bank product, not a brokerage. No scheme pays to appear in the comparison tool and none can pay to rank higher in it.

Staying current

Tax numbers update in March after the February Budget Speech. Medical aid contributions update in January when schemes publish new rates. The prime rate updates after each MPC meeting. The methodology page documents where each number comes from and when it was last refreshed.