Company tax · Guide 8 of 8
The ITR14: your company's tax return, and everything standing behind it.
A company's income tax return (ITR14) is where the year's accounting either holds together or falls apart. The return itself is a form; the quality of what stands behind it determines whether filing is routine or painful.
Last reviewed:
Who must file?
- All registered companies, including dormant companies and those that traded at a loss: an ITR14 is due regardless of activity.
- Close corporations file through the same company-return framework.
- Certain bodies (public benefit organisations, foreign entities with SA branches, trusts which use their own returns) follow related but distinct rules.
When is it due?
The ITR14 must be submitted within 12 months of your financial year-end, so your own year-end date sets your deadline. Companies with February year-ends also sit inside provisional tax obligations during the year, which feed directly into the final return.
What does the return actually require behind it?
- A reliable trial balance: every figure on the return traces back here.
- Annual financial statements or at minimum structured management accounts that reconcile to them.
- Supporting schedules: depreciation, debtors and creditors ageing, loans to or from directors and connected persons, dividends declared and paid, and assessed-loss positions.
- Evidence for deductions claimed: if an expense cannot be evidenced, it is a future verification problem, not a deduction.
The items that attract SARS attention
- Director loan accounts: large or growing amounts owed by directors raise dividend-in-hand and transfer-pricing questions depending on structure.
- Persistent losses alongside continued trading.
- Gross margins far off industry norms, visible to SARS through third-party and industry comparisons.
- Expenses inconsistent with turnover, or deductions unsupported by documentation when verification arrives.
None of these are fatal when the records can explain them. All of them are expensive when the records cannot.
The pattern we fix most often
Companies file ITR14s from trial balances nobody has reconciled to bank reality, sometimes for years. The return gets submitted, the numbers were wrong, and the error compounds until a verification, a bond application or a buyer's due diligence exposes it. The remedy is always the same sequence: rebuild the transaction trail from bank evidence, correct the ledger, then produce financial statements and the return from numbers that can be defended.
Important
This guide is general information, not tax advice. Deadlines and requirements depend on your company's facts and current legislation. Regulated submissions and tax-practitioner services are handled through registered partners where required.