Provisional Tax 2026-27: Two Payments, Three Returns, One Missed Date Too Many

If you are a provisional taxpayer, SARS expects two payments from you during the tax year and a reconciliation after it ends. The system is simple to describe and easy to trip over, because the three dates sit far apart and the penalty for missing the first one is not the kind of thing SARS sends a friendly reminder about.

Are you provisional?

You are a provisional taxpayer if you earn income that is not taxed through PAYE. That includes business owners, professionals, people earning rental income or commissions outside an employer, directors, and companies and trusts. If SARS classifies you as provisional, the responsibility to estimate your annual tax and pay it in advance falls on you.

The two payments and the reconciliation

For a taxpayer with a February year-end, the calendar runs like this:

• First provisional payment: by 31 August, the end of the sixth month of the tax year.
• Second provisional payment: by the end of February, the close of the tax year.
• Reconciliation, or third payment: by 30 September, within seven months after the year-end.

The idea is that you pay most of the tax during the year in which you earn the income, and the reconciliation settles the difference once the year's real figures are known.

The cost of missing a date

Practical habits that keep you out of trouble

How We Can Help

• A late submission attracts a penalty that keeps stretching the longer the return stays outstanding.
• An underpayment attracts interest, and it runs from the date the payment should have been made, not from the date SARS queries it.
• The estimate for the first payment is tested against what you actually earned. Understating it to hold onto cash is a strategy that fails, and the Act gives SARS the tools to collect the shortfall with interest.
• Set the two payment dates in your diary at the start of the tax year, and work back from them, not towards them.
• Base the first estimate on your previous year's taxable income, unless your circumstances have genuinely changed.
• Keep a running estimate of your income as the year goes, so the second payment and the September reconciliation come as no surprise.
• File every return on time, even if you owe nothing; a nil return is still a return.
• Keep your records: bank statements, invoices, expense proof, and the tax invoices behind every deduction. SARS can ask at any time, and the burden of proof sits with you.

OM Baloyi Inc offers tax services alongside its legal practice, including provisional tax planning, estimates and SARS correspondence. We help you work out what to pay, when to pay it, and what to do when a penalty or interest has already landed. If you want your tax year to run on a plan instead of on reminders, speak to us.

OM Baloyi Inc | Attorneys, Conveyancers, Notaries, Properties, Tax, Mining 51 Bouvet Avenue, Bellairspark Ext 5, Northriding, 2162 T: 087 265 1059 | E: info@ombaloyi.co.za | www.ombaloyi.co.za