SARS Deadlines 2026 and 2027: the compliance calendar from September to March

Between 1 September 2026 and 31 March 2027 a South African business faces ten dated obligations, plus the monthly PAYE return. The four that carry the heaviest penalties are 23 October 2026 for income tax returns, 31 October 2026 for the employer interim reconciliation, 15 January 2027 for employment equity, and 26 February 2027 for the second provisional tax payment.

That last date is not a typo. The second provisional tax payment is legally due on the last day of the year of assessment, which is 28 February 2027, and 28 February 2027 is a Sunday. SARS requires the money to be with them by the last business day, so the working deadline is Friday 26 February 2027. It is the first of six dates in this window that are not the date printed on most calendars, and this post is largely about why that keeps happening.

Every date below was read off a primary source on 31 August 2026. Where a date is provisional, it says so.

The calendar: 1 September 2026 to 31 March 2027

Date	What is due	Who it applies to	How firm
1 Sep 2026	Employment equity reporting season opens, manual and online	Designated employers	Fixed
21 Sep 2026	Employer interim reconciliation (EMP501) opens	All employers	Planning date, see below
30 Sep 2026	Optional third provisional payment for the 2026 year of assessment	February year-end companies, individuals, trusts	Fixed by rule
1 Oct 2026	Employment equity manual reports close	Designated employers filing on paper	Fixed
23 Oct 2026	Income tax return (ITR12) deadline, non-provisional taxpayers	Individuals not on provisional tax	Announced, firm
31 Oct 2026	Employer interim reconciliation (EMP501) closes	All employers	Fixed, falls on a Saturday
15 Jan 2027	Employment equity online reports close	Designated employers filing online	Fixed
22 Jan 2027	Income tax return (ITR12) deadline, provisional taxpayers	Individuals on provisional tax	Announced, firm
26 Feb 2027	Second provisional tax payment (IRP6)	Provisional taxpayers with a February year end	Fixed by rule, moved off 28 February
28 Feb 2027	Tax year end for individuals and February year-end companies	Everyone	Fixed

Running underneath all of that is the monthly employer return. The EMP201 is due within seven days after the end of the month in which the amount was deducted, and SARS states plainly that if the last day for payment falls on a public holiday or weekend, the payment must be made on the last business day before it. In this window that rule bites three times: October's return moves from Saturday 7 November to Friday 6 November, January's moves from Sunday 7 February to Friday 5 February, and February's moves from Sunday 7 March to Friday 5 March.

The opening date changes every year. The closing date never has

Most published versions of this calendar list 21 September 2026 as the day the employer interim reconciliation opens. That figure is real, but it is a planning date, and it comes with a caveat attached that almost nobody carries forward.

SARS publishes its reconciliation timetable as a table of Business Requirement Specifications on its Pay As You Earn page. Read on 31 August 2026, that table has eleven rows covering the 2017 to 2027 reconciliation years. Here is what happens when you read down the two date columns instead of taking only the top row.

Reconciliation year	Interim period opens	Interim period closes
2027	21 September 2026	31 October 2026
2026	22 September 2025	31 October 2025
2025	16 September 2024	31 October 2024
2024	18 September 2023	31 October 2023
2023	19 September 2022	31 October 2022
2022	13 September 2021	31 October 2021
2021	14 September 2020	31 October 2020
2020	23 September 2019	31 October 2019
2019	17 September 2018	31 October 2018
2018	15 September 2017	31 October 2017
2017	12 September 2016	31 October 2016

Eleven years, eleven different opening days, spread from the 12th to the 23rd of September. No two consecutive years share one. Over the same eleven years the closing date is 31 October every single time, without exception. The annual reconciliation behaves the same way: it has closed on 31 May in all eleven years, while its opening date has moved.

SARS says so itself. The footnote under that table reads that the final submission periods are subject to business requirements or readiness and calendar working day dates, and that final confirmation will be communicated at the time of the relevant submission period. The opening date is explicitly labelled as not yet final. The closing date carries no such caveat and has not needed one in over a decade.

This inverts how most businesses use the calendar. The opening date is the one people diarise, because it is the one in the headline, and it is the only date on the page that is allowed to move. The closing date is the one that determines whether you are penalised, and it is the one you can safely plan a year ahead against. If you set one reminder for this, set it for 31 October.

Six dates in this window are not the date on the page

SARS defines a business day as any day that is not a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday. Deadlines that land on a non-business day move backwards, never forwards, which means the printed date is always the later of the two and always the wrong one to work to.

Between September and March, that happens six times:

• 31 October 2026, the interim reconciliation close, is a Saturday. Your last working day to fix a rejected submission is Friday 30 October.
• 7 November 2026, the EMP201 for October, is a Saturday. Payment must clear by Friday 6 November.
• 31 January 2027 is a Sunday. Anything you were treating as a month-end task lands on Friday 29 January.
• 7 February 2027, the EMP201 for January, is a Sunday. Payment must clear by Friday 5 February.
• 28 February 2027, the second provisional tax payment and the year end itself, is a Sunday. Payment must clear by Friday 26 February.
• 7 March 2027, the EMP201 for February, is a Sunday. Payment must clear by Friday 5 March.

The 26 February one is the expensive member of that list. It sits two days before the date almost everyone has written down, it falls in the same week as year end when finance is already stretched, and a late or short second provisional payment attracts a penalty and interest rather than a warning. Late employer returns are on a scale of their own: SARS applies a penalty of 1 percent of the annual PAYE liability for every month a reconciliation stays outstanding, up to 10 percent, and states that an employer who wilfully or negligently fails to submit an EMP201 or EMP501 is guilty of an offence carrying a fine or up to two years imprisonment.

What is deliberately not on this calendar

Two obligations appear on most published compliance calendars with a fixed date next to them, and for most readers that date is wrong.

CIPC annual returns have no shared deadline. They are anniversary based, tied to the month your company was incorporated, so there is no single date that could honestly be printed here. Yours is a date only your registration documents can tell you, and the beneficial ownership filing now travels with it. We covered how that works in our guide to CIPC annual returns.

The COIDA return of earnings does not fall in this window at all. It is an annual filing whose submission season runs in the first half of the calendar year, and the 2026 season closed before this window opened. The next one falls in 2027, outside the seven months covered here. The Compensation Fund confirms its exact window each year, so check it rather than assume a repeat of last year's, which is the same trap as the September reconciliation date above. Our COIDA registration and return of earnings guide has the detail.

VAT is the third case, and it is left out for a different reason: your VAT period depends on the category you were assigned when you registered, so a single date would be wrong for most vendors. Your own eFiling work page carries your actual due dates, and those are the ones to work to.

How to stop rebuilding this calendar every quarter

Compliance deadlines are almost never missed because nobody knew about them. They are missed because the date lived in one person's head or one person's phone, and the information needed to act on it lived somewhere else. Four things change that, and none of them require a bigger team.

Derive the reminder from the rule, not from a typed date. The rules on this page are all computable: seven days after month end and then back to the previous business day; the last business day of February; the first working day of October; 31 October. A system that holds the rule gets all six weekend shifts above right by itself. A date typed into a calendar app in September is wrong six times by March, and nothing tells you when it goes wrong.

Capture the payroll figures once, at approval. The interim EMP501 has to reconcile the PAYE, UIF and SDL values from the EMP201 returns you already filed. When those numbers are captured at the moment payroll is approved, October is a review. When they are re-keyed in October from six months of payslip exports, October is a rebuild, and the differences you find are as likely to be transcription as substance.

Hold the employee tax reference numbers in one place, now. From the 2026 reconciliation period, SARS will not accept an EMP501 submission that is missing required tax reference numbers. Chasing them from staff in the last week of October is one of the most common reasons an interim reconciliation lands late, and it is entirely avoidable in September.

Keep the evidence attached to the obligation. A submitted return, its acknowledgement and the payment proof belong in one place, filed against the deadline they satisfy. That is what turns a request for a tax compliance status pin or a letter of good standing from a two-day search into a two-minute retrieval.

This is the same principle as automating a report: the work is not the filing, it is the assembly that happens before the filing, and the assembly is what a system can absorb.

Frequently Asked Questions

When exactly is the second provisional tax payment due in 2027?

Friday 26 February 2027. SARS requires the second payment no later than the last business day of the year of assessment. The year of assessment ends 28 February 2027, which is a Sunday, so the working deadline moves back to the preceding Friday.

Is 21 September 2026 a confirmed date for the employer interim reconciliation?

No. It is the planning date in the SARS reconciliation specification for 2026 and 2027, and SARS states the final submission periods are subject to readiness and will be confirmed at the time. The 31 October close is the reliable one.

What happens if an employer submits the EMP501 late?

SARS applies a penalty of 1 percent of the annual PAYE liability for each month the reconciliation remains outstanding, up to a maximum of 10 percent. Wilful or negligent failure to submit is also an offence carrying a fine or imprisonment.

Do I have to file an employment equity report?

Only designated employers do, which broadly means employers with 50 or more employees, along with municipalities, organs of state and employers bound by a collective agreement. Reporting opened 1 September 2026 and online submissions close 15 January 2027.

Why does the income tax deadline differ between October and January?

SARS runs a phased filing season. Non-provisional taxpayers file by 23 October 2026. Provisional taxpayers, meaning people with income other than a salary, have until 22 January 2027 for the same tax year.

Sources

• SARS, Pay As You Earn, including the employer reconciliation Business Requirement Specification timetable, the EMP201 payment rule and the penalty provisions. Read 31 August 2026.
• SARS, Provisional Tax, for the second and third payment rules and the definition of a business day. Read 31 August 2026.
• SA Government News Agency, SARS announces 2026 filing season dates, 18 June 2026, for the 23 October 2026 and 22 January 2027 deadlines.
• Department of Employment and Labour, employment equity reporting season dates for 2026 and 2027.

Related reading

• The South African business compliance checklist, every obligation in the order it becomes yours, which is the companion to this date-ordered view
• Employment equity reporting, who must submit and what the sector targets changed
• Provisional tax, the first period, the basic amount and what paying late costs
• CIPC annual returns, the anniversary deadline and the deregistration risk
• COIDA registration and the return of earnings
• The tax compliance status pin, what it checks and why it fails
• Automating a report, the assembly problem underneath every recurring deadline
• The real cost of manual admin

If your compliance calendar currently lives in one person's head, a business autopsy is where we map what is due, what it costs you to produce, and what a system can carry instead. Or start with a free discovery call.