The South African fuel levy raised R95.2 billion in 2025/26, and BusinessTech estimates that works out to about R7,900 a year for each vehicle owner. The headline says “every person filling up”, but the article body is about vehicle owners, and the number is an average, not a bill any one motorist receives.
Where the R7,900 comes from
BusinessTech reports that fuel levy revenue rose 10.9% to R95.2 billion in the 2026 financial year, from R85.9 billion the year before. It says each vehicle owner “pays an estimated R7,900 a year on the fuel levy alone.” The article does not show its arithmetic, but the number is consistent with dividing R95.2 billion by roughly 12 million motorised vehicles, which gives about R7,930. That division is our own check, not a figure published by the Treasury or SARS.
We could not find the R95.2 billion levy figure in the SARS statement we fetched, which reports headline collections only. It appears to rest on BusinessTech’s reading of the revenue tables, so treat it as reported, not independently confirmed.
What the average assumes
An average per vehicle hides a lot. The calculation treats every one of the 12 million vehicles as paying the same amount, when a delivery van running daily routes uses far more fuel than a car driven to the shops on weekends. It also assumes almost all levy revenue comes from those vehicles, as BusinessTech does, and it excludes about 1.3 million towed vehicles such as caravans and trailers, which do not burn fuel themselves.
The base matters. Spread the same R95.2 billion across 13.3 million vehicles and the average drops to about R7,160, by our arithmetic. Neither figure tells you what a particular household or business pays, and neither is a per-person number, since many South Africans do not own a vehicle and some companies own hundreds.
What the levy is per litre
The per-litre rates give a way to sanity-check the average. Freight News reports that, with effect from 1 April 2026, the general fuel levy rose from 401c a litre to 410c on petrol and from 385c to 393c on diesel. The carbon fuel levy rose from 14c to 19c on petrol and from 17c to 23c on diesel. Those increases implement the Budget proposals announced on 25 February 2026, it says.
On petrol, the two levies together come to 429c a litre. At that rate, R7,900 corresponds to roughly 1,840 litres a year per vehicle, or about 150 litres a month. That is our own division, and it uses petrol rates only. It shows the average is plausible for a typical private car, while the freight and bus operators that burn diesel in bulk sit far above it.
Why levy revenue grew faster than total revenue
The R95.2 billion is the 2025/26 outturn, before the full effect of the April 2026 increases, which applied only from the start of this financial year. The 10.9% growth in levy revenue compares with 8.4% growth in net revenue overall. According to the SARS statement, net revenue reached R2,010.3 billion for the year, the first time collections passed R2 trillion. Fuel is therefore a small slice of the total, about 4.7% by our calculation.
The levy is also a policy lever, not only a revenue line. Moonstone reports that the temporary R3 fuel levy reduction in April cost an estimated R6 billion for the month, and quotes the then SARS commissioner as saying stronger collections covered part of that. That illustrates how much revenue a few rand on the litre moves.
What is new here and what is not
The calls to suspend the levy and proposals to add a R3 levy for the Road Accident Fund are covered in our earlier reporting. The new element in this report is the per-vehicle average and the assumptions behind it. It is a useful scale marker for fleet owners, transport firms and households budgeting fuel, but it is not an official SARS statistic. For the exact figure that applies to your own vehicles, multiply the litres you buy by the current levy rates above, and note that these cover only the levies, not the other components of the pump price. More coverage is in our Regulatory & Policy section.
