Tax & SARS · 27 August 2026 · 6 min read
Here is what actually matters before the deadline, in plain terms.
If you are an individual provisional taxpayer, or a company with a February year-end, your first payment for the year is due on 31 August. It is tempting to treat that first one as a formality, a number you pluck out of the air now and promise to fix later. That is exactly where it goes wrong. The estimate is the whole game, and SARS has been paying far more attention to it lately.
The short version
Provisional tax is not a separate or extra tax. It is simply a way of paying your income tax in advance, in two instalments, instead of in one lump sum at year-end. If you earn income that is not already taxed through a salary (business profits, rental income, investments, a side income) SARS wants you to pay as you go. You declare an estimate of your taxable income for the year on a form called an IRP6, and you pay tax on it in two bites: the first by 31 August, the second by the end of February (for individuals and companies with a February year-end). Get the estimate right and it is painless. Get it wrong and it gets expensive.
Most provisional tax pain comes from a handful of very human assumptions. These are the ones we see most often.
The estimate is the whole game, and SARS has been paying far more attention to it lately.
It cannot be a guess just because it is early in the year. SARS has been increasing its scrutiny of provisional tax estimates, and a number picked out of thin air is exactly what draws attention. The goal is a reasonable estimate built from your actual figures, not a placeholder.
Money in the bank is not the same as taxable income. Your account can look quiet and you can still owe SARS, because tax is worked out on your taxable income, not on whatever is left once you have paid everyone else.
Your books can show a loss while SARS still sees taxable income. Some expenses are not deductible for tax, and some income is taxed even when it never really felt like profit. Assuming “we made a loss, so there’s nothing to pay” is one of the most common and costly mistakes going.
If you have sold a property, shares or another asset during the year, the capital gain needs to go into your estimate. It is easy to forget a once-off sale when your head is in month-to-month trading, but SARS will not forget it.
Having employees’ tax deducted from a salary does not automatically mean you are covered. If you also earn income on the side, you can still be a provisional taxpayer, which is exactly the sort of thing worth having someone map out for you properly rather than discovering it after the fact.
Rushing to buy an asset you do not actually need, purely to shrink your tax bill, rarely works the way people hope. Genuine tax planning goes a good deal deeper than a panic purchase in the last week of the year.
This is the part people underestimate. Get your second estimate too low and SARS can charge a 20% underestimation penalty. It is worked out on the gap between the tax you actually paid and a set threshold of what you really owed: 80% if your taxable income is above R2.3 million, 90% if it is below. Pay late or pay short and there is a further 10% penalty on top, plus interest that keeps ticking over. And none of it, penalty or interest, is tax-deductible. That is money you do not get back, the price of a rushed guess, and almost entirely avoidable.
Treated well, that first payment is a chance to look at your year, understand what you are likely to owe, and plan for it before it arrives. Push a proper estimate off to the second payment in February and you have not dodged the work, you have simply moved it to your busiest, tightest time of year and stacked pressure on top of it. Dealt with now, the first payment tells you where you stand while you can still do something about it.
A good practitioner does not just take your numbers, punch them in, and tell you what to pay. They ask questions, they look at the whole picture, and they plan ahead. If the first you hear about a deadline is a request for information a few days before it, treat that as a red flag. Provisional tax done well is a conversation that starts early, not a scramble that happens late.
If you have read this far and quietly realised you are not sure what your estimate should be, that is exactly the moment to get help, not the week after the deadline. At Steyn Smal and Associates, provisional tax is something we plan with you, not something we spring on you. Take a look at our Tax & Compliance services, or book a consultation and let’s get your first payment right the first time.
Your first provisional tax payment is due 31 August.
Let’s make it a plan, not a guess.
