BIZEMPIRE
(South Africa)

Helping you start and build your small business empire

Every now and then it becomes necessary (although many will disagree with the necessity) for our Government to introduce new legislation that affects small businesses in South Africa. This page will feature these pieces of law and will discuss the practical implications, together with possible discussions from legal experts should the need arise. We also cover existing laws that could affect the small business owner - as a type of refresher course. We recommend that you subscribe to our newsletter so that you don't miss out on any of this free advice.

Company annual return

All companies in South Africa are now required to annually submit information called the annual return. This return needs to be submitted to the registrar of companies and includes information on who the directors and auditors are, and business contact details amongst other basic information.

It is actually quite easy to submit online by going to the Cipro website. The information is required to keep the Government updated on the various trading entities in the country. Bizempire sees the value in that, but we must add that the fact that you need to pay upwards of R450 in order to submit this return is a little unnecessary and irritating.

At the moment, only companies and not sole proprietors or cc are required to submit this return. It is therefore possible to get your auditor to do this task for you each year, but this will come at a fee.

This bit of red tape admin is only required once a year and can be done in 15-20 minutes, so its affect on productivity is negligible. The biggest trick is being able to remember to even fill in the return as CIPRO does not seem to have any reminder system setup despite being provided with contact details each year.

The subject matter dealt with on this site is of a general nature only. It is always advisable to consult a professional for your specific situation. All information provided on this site has been carefully chosen and is to the best of our knowledge correct and current. If however you find errors, broken links or disagree with facts provided, please contact us at webmaster@bizempire.co.za so that we can make the correction and provide South African business owners with relevant and error free factual information. If you believe there is relevant content missing and you wish to add this value to the site, then you can contact us at the same address