Most SA small business compliance calendars are the same static listicle: here’s every CIPC, SARS and UIF deadline, go figure out which ones apply to you. I built one that asks a few questions instead (sole prop or company, VAT registered or not, employees or not) and computes only the deadlines that actually apply, each with a real date, not a copied one.
A few things I tried to get right:
Every date is computed, not copied from last year’s article. CIPC’s 30-business-day Annual Return window, the ITR14’s 12 months from year-end, both provisional tax payments, VAT, EMP201, EMP501, it all comes from the underlying rule, including South Africa’s public holidays (Easter’s Good Friday and Family Day included), shifted back to the correct business day.
February year-end gets its actual exception. The voluntary provisional tax top-up is normally 6 months after year-end, except a February year-end (which is most sole props and plenty of companies) gets 7 months, 30 September, not 31 August. Missed that and you’d have the common case wrong, not an edge case.
It’s honest about what it can’t know. A couple of items, the individual tax filing season and the COIDA Return of Earnings window, are announced fresh every year. Instead of pretending those are as solid as the computed ones, they’re flagged “confirm annually” so you know to double-check.
Add one deadline or the whole list to your calendar. Every item exports to a .ics file, or grab the whole personalised set in one go.
Try it here: Small Business Compliance Calendar South Africa
It covers sole proprietors and Pty Ltd companies (not CCs, NPCs or trusts yet), assumes eFiling, and it’s a planning aid, not legal or tax advice. Curious whether the CIPC Beneficial Ownership requirement (bundled with the Annual Return since mid-2024) is catching people out as much as I suspect it is.