SARS Compliance Calendar for Companies: Key Deadlines and Strategies for 2026

Updated 17 August 2026 for the current SARS deadlines and filing-season dates.

Staying on the right side of SARS is mostly a matter of knowing your dates and preparing early. With SARS enforcement getting sharper every year — including automated assessments and stricter data-matching against employer and third-party records — here is the compliance calendar every South African company should be working from in 2026.

Income tax filing — Filing Season 2026

• 1–12 July 2026: SARS issued auto-assessments to taxpayers with simpler tax affairs. If you agreed with yours, no action was needed.
• 13 July – 23 October 2026: filing window for individual, non-provisional taxpayers.
• Until 22 January 2027: provisional taxpayers (including most business owners and directors) may file their ITR12 returns.
• Companies: the ITR14 company return is due within 12 months of your financial year-end.

For a fuller breakdown of the season, see our Filing Season 2026 guide.

Provisional tax

Companies and individuals who earn income outside of salary pay tax in advance through provisional payments: the first six months into the year of assessment, the second by year-end, and an optional third top-up payment afterwards to limit interest. For a February year-end, that means payments at the end of August and the end of February. Missing or underestimating these payments triggers penalties — see our plain-English provisional tax guide.

Payroll: EMP201, EMP501 and IRP5s

• Monthly: EMP201 declarations and payment of PAYE, UIF and SDL by the 7th of the following month.
• 1 April – 31 May 2026: the annual EMP501 reconciliation for the 2025/26 tax year.
• 17 September – 31 October 2026: the interim EMP501 reconciliation window.
• New for 2026: SARS no longer accepts EMP501 submissions with missing employee Income Tax Reference Numbers — clean employee data is now non-negotiable.

VAT

VAT201 returns and payments are due on your normal cycle (typically every two months for smaller vendors). Note that from 1 April 2026 the compulsory registration threshold rose to R2.3 million — if your turnover is below that, staying registered is now a choice worth reviewing.

CIPC

Every company must file its CIPC annual return in the anniversary month of its incorporation — and since July 2024, CIPC will not accept it unless a beneficial ownership declaration is on record. Our CIPC compliance guide covers both filings.

Five habits that keep you penalty-free

• Reconcile your books monthly, not at year-end — clean records make every return faster and defensible.
• Diarise every SARS and CIPC deadline for your specific year-end, with lead time to prepare.
• Keep employee tax details (including Income Tax Reference Numbers) current all year.
• Respond to SARS correspondence immediately — silence converts queries into assessments.
• Review your provisional tax estimates against actual performance before each payment.

If deadline-chasing is eating time you should be spending on your business, that is exactly the job we do. Stelios Group manages the full compliance calendar — tax, payroll, VAT and CIPC — for businesses across Pretoria. Book a free consultation.

Sources: SARS — Filing Season 2026; SARS — Employer Annual Reconciliation.