The average salary for a car salesman in South Africa working 40 hours a week is around R20,000 per month, equating to an annual income of R240,000 before taxes and other deductions.
Once the total tax of R2,502 (12.5%) is subtracted, the typical car salesman in the country walks away with approximately R17,498 per month, or R209,976 per year, in their pocket.
These figures, provided by Talent.com, are based on the paychecks of 1,169 vehicle salesmen around the country.
What do beginners make?
For beginner car salesmen with no prior experience, the mean remuneration in South Africa amounts to R11,500 per month, or R138,000 per year.
Once again the taxman will take his slice, with R701 going to Pay As You Earn (PAYE) and another R115 to the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), totaling R816 in taxes or 7.1% of these monthly earnings.
The net pay for a greenhorn is therefore R10,684 a month, equaling a yearly income of R128,208.
What do seasoned sellers earn?
Seasoned car salesmen, meanwhile, can earn up to R36,500 per month if they’ve been in the industry for long enough, which tallies up to R438,000 per year, according to Talent.com.
They do, however, give a fair bit more to government whether they like it or not.
In this income bracket, the taxes are split across R6,986 for PAYE and R177 for UIF – approximately 19.6% of the monthly paycheck.
As such, experienced car sellers can earn around R29,355 per month in clean cash, or R352,260 a year.
Commission vs Salary
Depending on the dealership, a car salesman will get a monthly salary or decide his own pay by earning a commission on every sale.
The main benefit of a salary is that you receive a fixed amount of money at the end of every month even if you don’t sell a single vehicle which brings a level of income security that commission-based paychecks do not provide.
However, the downside is that even if you move the most units out of all the sellers in the entire dealership in those 30 days, your salary won’t go up accordingly.
As such, the biggest upside to earning commission is that you make money on every car you sell, which at the end of the month can amount to more than what a fixed salary would have been.
The risk associated with this is that if you don’t have any customers, you don’t get paid, and there could be major fluctuations in your remuneration from one month to the next depending on how many cars you sell.
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