Your VAT return says SARS owes you R86,000. Three weeks later, the money still hasn’t arrived. Before you phone SARS a third time, find out what the delay actually is. A refund can be held up by banking verification, outstanding returns, tax debt or a request for supporting documents. The
Seeing a SARS penalty on eFiling can feel final. An amount has been raised. There is a due date. SARS says you owe it. So most people assume there are only two options: pay it or ignore it. There can be a third. In certain circumstances, SARS penalties can be
Every month, thousands of business owners receive a set of management accounts. They open the email. Download the PDF. Look at the revenue number. Look at the profit. Maybe compare the bank balance. Then close it. That is not reading your management accounts. That is checking the score. Management accounts
October does something strange to business owners. The year suddenly feels finished. December is around the corner. Projects are being wrapped up. Staff are thinking about leave. Clients start saying, “Let’s pick this up in January.” So the business slowly starts behaving as though the year is already over. It
Selling an asset for more than you paid for it feels like a win. And it is. But the number that lands in your bank account is not necessarily the number you get to keep. Whether you are selling an investment property, shares, part of a business, or another capital
Most business owners are better at doing the work than they are at getting paid for it. The invoice goes out. The due date passes. A week goes by. Then two. The business owner thinks about following up, feels slightly uncomfortable, and finds something else to do instead. Meanwhile the
The 2026 individual tax filing season is almost over. Non-provisional taxpayers have until 23 October 2026 to file. Provisional taxpayers have until 22 January 2027. September is the last full month before the October deadline arrives. If you haven’t started, the time to start is now — not the week
For the first time since 2009 — seventeen years — the VAT registration threshold in South Africa has changed. From 1 April 2026, the compulsory VAT registration threshold increased from R1 million to R2.3 million. The voluntary registration threshold also increased, from R50,000 to R120,000. The VAT rate itself remains
Every year, as South Africa’s tax filing season opens, fraudsters get to work. They know exactly what you’re doing right now. You’re filing a tax return, waiting for a refund, or expecting correspondence from SARS. And that heightened watchfulness for anything SARS-related is precisely what scammers are counting on. SARS
Most business owners have one of two relationships with a budget. Either they’ve never built one — too busy, too complicated, always something more urgent. Or they built one in January, felt very responsible about it, and haven’t looked at it since. Both approaches have the same result: the business
