What a company files in South Africa [ZA]

Every company on the Commission's register, of whatever size and whether or not it traded. Regulation 30(1) counts the period «within 30 business days after the anniversary of the date of its incorporation», and for a company domesticated into South Africa from the anniversary of the transfer date. Two points about the counting deserve attention. The days are business days and not calendar days, so the true last day falls later than a plain count of thirty days and moves with public holidays; a date derived from a calendar count is therefore earlier than the statutory one, which errs on the safe side but is not the statutory date. And the clock is the anniversary of incorporation and nothing else: it is not the financial year end, and a company that changed its financial year end has not moved this deadline. An external company has its own thirty business days from the anniversary of its registration. A close corporation does not use this window at all: it files from the first day of its anniversary month up to the end of the month after that. A company that was inactive in the preceding financial year may apply under regulation 30(8) for exemption from the fee, supported by financial statements showing no turnover — the exemption is from the fee and not from the filing.

The fee turns on annual turnover and on whether the return is filed inside the thirty business days. The table printed by the Commission for returns due on or after 1 May 2011 reads: turnover below R1 million, R100 filed in time and R150 filed later; R1 million to below R10 million, R450 and R600; R10 million to below R25 million, R2 000 and R2 500; R25 million and above, R3 000 and R4 000. An application to reinstate a deregistered company on Form CoR 40.5 costs R200, and incorporating a new company instead costs R175. The Regulations themselves place the fee in Table CR 2B; that table was not in the copy of the Regulations read for this record, so the amounts above are the Commission's own published figures and not the table's.

Every company and every close corporation, but by two different routes, and the route decides what is lodged and on what clock. An affected company must under regulation 32A «establish and maintain a register of persons who hold beneficial interest equal to or in excess of 5%», recording each holder's identity and contact details and the extent of the interest, and must reflect a change in that register within 10 business days of the notification received under section 122(1); regulation 30(1A) then requires a copy of that register to be filed with the annual return. A company that is not an affected company falls under regulation 32B instead: it files the applicable CoR form with a copy of its securities register, in the form and manner the Commission prescribes, within 10 business days after updating the securities register under regulation 32(3A). The two clocks therefore coexist — an annual filing that travels with the annual return, and an event-driven filing within 10 business days of a change — and meeting one does not discharge the other. The Commission has made this step a gate rather than a parallel duty: a company «will not be allowed to file its Annual Return via any of the CIPC electronic platforms UNLESS BO has been submitted». Strict enforcement of that gate is dated by the Commission from 15 April 2024.

Which document is filed depends on whether the company must be audited, and that turns on a score rather than on turnover alone. Regulation 28(2) requires audited annual financial statements from public and state-owned companies, from a profit or non-profit company that holds assets in a fiduciary capacity for persons who are not related to it where the aggregate value «exceeds R5 million» at any time during the financial year, from certain non-profit companies incorporated by or for the state or an organ of state, and from any other company whose public interest score «is 350 or more», or «is at least 100, if its annual financial statements for that year were internally compiled». The second branch of that last limb matters as much as the first: a company scoring between 100 and 349 is audited if it compiled its own statements and not audited if an independent compiler did, so the same company can fall on either side by changing who prepares the accounts. Regulation 26(2) builds the score at each financial year end by adding one point for each member of the average number of employees during the year, one point for every R1 million or part of a R1 million of third-party liability at year end, one point for every R1 million or part of a R1 million of turnover during the year, and one point for each individual known to the company to hold a beneficial interest in its securities — for a non-profit company, each member or member of an association that is a member. Regulation 28 does not apply to a company exempt under section 30(2A). A company not required to be audited may still elect under regulation 30(3) to file audited or independently reviewed statements, and one that neither must nor elects files Form CoR 30.2 instead. Where statements are reviewed rather than audited, regulation 29 requires the review «in accordance with ISRE 2400», and from a public interest score of at least 100 the reviewer must be a registered auditor or a member of an accredited professional body; the reviewer may not have been involved in preparing the statements, and a suspected reportable irregularity must be reported to the Commission without delay, the board notified within three business days, and a further report sent within 20 business days.

Every company liable to tax under the Income Tax Act, 1962, with no threshold by size and whether or not it traded in the year. The deadline is counted from a date this page does not know: the Revenue Service states that «An ITR14 return must be submitted to SARS within 12 months after the financial year end of a Company», and the financial year end is the one the company itself elected and the Commission recorded, so no calendar date can be derived here until that date is supplied. One further caution about this record's stability rather than its content: the exact submission dates for a filing season are fixed by public notice each year, and the Revenue Service's own Budget 2026 material states that the 2026 filing-season dates were not yet published when it was read. The twelve-month rule is the rule the Revenue Service publishes; a season notice can narrow or shift the practical date for particular categories of taxpayer, and that notice is what should be checked before relying on a derived date.

No date can be derived here. This deadline runs from something this page does not know — the financial year the company itself elects, or an event only you can date. What is published is the rule, not the day.

A company is a provisional taxpayer by definition and not by election: paragraph 2(a)(ii) of the Fourth Schedule to the Income Tax Act lists «A company» as such. The Revenue Service names three exceptions — a body corporate, a share block company and a public benefit company — and every other company «is required to submit provisional tax returns (IRP6)». There are two deadlines in this one record, and they are counted from opposite ends of the same year. The first period falls «within six months from the commencement of the year of assessment in question», under paragraph 10(a)(i); the second falls «not later than the last day of the year of assessment in question», under paragraph 10(a)(ii). A company whose year runs from 1 March to the end of February therefore files by 31 August and again by 28 or 29 February. Only the second of the two can be computed on this page, because the deadline formulas available here count forward from the end of a financial year and the first period counts forward from its start; a company with a shortened or lengthened financial year — and in South Africa a financial year may run up to 15 months — cannot derive the first period from the year end at all. The first period is therefore stated in words above and must be dated from the start of the company's own year of assessment.

No date can be derived here. This deadline runs from something this page does not know — the financial year the company itself elects, or an event only you can date. What is published is the rule, not the day.

The return is due from a registered vendor, and registration itself is compulsory once taxable supplies cross a threshold — but that threshold is in motion and the Revenue Service's own publications do not agree on it, so both figures are set out here rather than one. The Revenue Service's current «Register for VAT» page, read on 8 October 2026, puts compulsory registration where «the value of taxable supplies made in any consecutive 12 month period exceeded or is likely to exceed R2.3 million», adds a second trigger where under a written contract «the value of taxable supplies to be made in a 12 month period will exceed R2.3 million», gives the application window as «within 21 business days» after that point, and sets voluntary registration above R120 000 of taxable supplies in the past 12 months. The Revenue Service's VAT 404 Guide for Vendors, Issue 15, whose operational information is stated to be up to date as at 17 December 2024, describes the same regime with a threshold «exceeding R1 million in any consecutive period of 12 months, or will exceed that amount in terms of a written contractual obligation» and a voluntary threshold of R50 000. The Revenue Service's Budget 2026 material reconciles the two in time but not in law: it states that the threshold is «exceeds R2.3 million per annum (increased from R1 million)» from 1 April 2026 and that «Although the amendments have not yet been promulgated» the new figure is already being applied. Neither value is resolved against the other here; the threshold field carries the figure the Revenue Service is applying, and the R1 million of the statute as the Guide states it is recorded in this note. The return cycle does not depend on the threshold at all: once registered, a vendor files for every tax period whether or not supplies were made in it.

No date can be derived here. This deadline runs from something this page does not know — the financial year the company itself elects, or an event only you can date. What is published is the rule, not the day.