Earnings in the South African Revenue Service IRP5 data

The IRP5 and IT3(a) tax data from the South African Revenue Service have been made available to researchers through a joint project between the South African Revenue Service, the National Treasury, and UNU-WIDER. In this paper, I explain how to use these data to correctly identify labour income for employees, which is crucial for labour market research. I then compare total labour income and employment between 2011 and 2017 with other sources of data, including Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Surveys and Quarterly Employment Statistics firm surveys. Finally, I use the data to estimate Gini coefficients and percentile ratios for labour income over this period.