Skills Development Levy

You already pay for training. Most companies never claim it back.

If your payroll runs over R500,000 a year you pay the Skills Development Levy every month, whether anyone in your company is trained or not. A fifth of it is refundable — and what earns the refund is paperwork, not which training provider you buy from.

1% of total payroll, paid monthly with your EMP201
R500,000 expected annual payroll at which you become liable
20% payable back to you as the mandatory grant
30 April annual deadline for the WSP and ATR

What the levy actually costs you

SDL (Skills Development Levy) is one percent of your total payroll — wages, overtime, leave pay, bonuses, fees, commissions and lump sum payments. SARS applies a forward-looking test: an employer becomes liable where it expects total salaries to exceed R500,000 over the next twelve months. It is declared on the monthly EMP201 and paid within seven days of month end.

On a R4 million payroll that is R40,000 a year. On R12 million it is R120,000. It leaves the account every month regardless of whether a single person attends a single course, which is what makes an unclaimed levy an unusually expensive habit: you are paying for a training budget and then not spending it.

The 20% that comes back, and what actually earns it

Twenty percent of the levy you paid is payable directly back to you as the mandatory grant. It is not a deduction against taxable income. It is a payment from your SETA (Sector Education and Training Authority) into your bank account.

What earns it is not training spend. It is two documents:

  1. The Workplace Skills Plan (WSP) — what you intend to train in the year ahead, by person and by skill.
  2. The Annual Training Report (ATR) — what you actually trained in the year behind.

Submit both to the SETA your business falls under by 30 April, as a levy-payer in good standing with a Skills Development Facilitator named, and the grant is paid. SETAs vary and extensions have been granted, so treat the date as firm rather than absolute — but miss it and, in practice, that year is gone.

The part most providers are vague about

Bam Cloud AI is not a SETA-accredited training provider, and this page is not going to imply otherwise.

For the mandatory grant, that is not the question being asked. The 20% is paid for planning and reporting your training. Neither the Skills Development Levies Act nor the SETA grant criteria condition that payment on where the training was purchased — Microsoft certification coaching and Applied Skills workshops are recorded in your WSP and ATR the same way any other planned and delivered training is.

Where accreditation genuinely matters is the discretionary grant: the larger competitive pot aimed at scarce and critical skills, learnerships and PIVOTAL (Professional, Vocational, Technical and Academic Learning) programmes. That route wants accredited providers and registered qualifications, and it is a different conversation with a different kind of supplier. If that is what your business needs, I will say so rather than sell you something adjacent to it.

What goes in the plan

A WSP is a plan for people, not a shopping list of courses, so it works best when the training maps to roles you can name. The work that typically fits:

Certification

Azure certification coaching for AZ-900, AZ-104 and AZ-305 — exam-aligned preparation for administrators and architects, reported against the individuals doing it. Certification courses →

Applied Skills

One-day hands-on workshops that end in a free, permanent Microsoft credential earned in a lab rather than an exam room — easy to evidence in an ATR. Applied Skills workshops →

Communication

Business English for IT professionals, for teams where the technical skill is already there and the reporting, documentation and client contact is what holds people back. Business English →

B-BBEE, briefly and honestly

Skills development carries the heaviest weighting on most B-BBEE (Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment) scorecards, and money spent training black employees counts toward it. Unaccredited short courses do count, but they sit in a separate capped category rather than against the main target.

That cap has been reported as changing recently, and I have not been able to confirm the current figure against a primary source. So I am not going to print a percentage here for you to plan against. Confirm it with your B-BBEE verification agency before you build a budget on it — including on the strength of anything you read on this page.

What I do, and what I do not

I am not your Skills Development Facilitator. I do not compile your WSP, I do not submit to your SETA, and I do not process your grant claim — your accountant, payroll bureau or SDF does that, and most SMEs in the Western Cape already have one whether or not they are using them properly.

What I do is the training that goes into the plan. I am an AZ-305 certified Azure Solutions Architect Expert and AZ-104 certified Azure Administrator, and a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT), working from Durbanville and delivering across Cape Town and the Western Cape in person, and worldwide online. Thirty years in enterprise infrastructure since 1996, most of it inside a large South African financial services group, which means the environments your team actually runs are ones I have run.

If you are paying the levy and not claiming it, the cheapest next step is a conversation about what your team needs this year — then your SDF has something real to put in the plan.

Tell us what you need See the rates

Questions employers actually ask

Do I have to use an accredited provider to claim the 20% back?
Not for the mandatory grant. That 20% is paid for submitting a compliant Workplace Skills Plan and Annual Training Report as a levy-payer in good standing. Accredited providers and registered qualifications matter for discretionary grants, which are a separate and competitive pot.
We pay the levy but have never submitted anything. Can we start now?
Yes. The cycle runs annually to a 30 April deadline, so the practical question is whether you can get a Skills Development Facilitator appointed and a plan compiled before the next one. Start the conversation with your accountant or payroll bureau now rather than in April.
Our payroll is under R500,000. Does any of this apply?
You are below the SARS liability threshold, so you do not pay the levy and there is no grant to claim. Training is then a straight commercial decision rather than a recovery of money already spent — and B-BBEE skills development spend may still be relevant depending on your scorecard.
Does Microsoft certification training count as training for WSP purposes?
Planned, delivered and evidenced training is what a WSP and ATR record. Certification coaching and Applied Skills workshops are both documented deliveries with attendance and, in most cases, a Microsoft credential at the end, which makes them straightforward to evidence.
Can you help us decide what the team should be trained in?
Yes, and that is usually the useful part. Most plans fail because nobody mapped the training to what the environment actually needs. A short conversation about your estate and your team's roles produces a far better plan than a catalogue does. Tell us what you need.

Levy rate, the R500,000 liability test and the seven-day payment rule are as published by SARS. The 20% mandatory grant and the 30 April WSP/ATR deadline are as published by the SETAs. Verified 14 September 2026. Nothing on this page is tax or B-BBEE advice — confirm your own position with your accountant, Skills Development Facilitator or verification agency.