CIPC Annual Return Deadline
Your registration date in — your exact filing window out. Free, instant, nothing stored.
Why this date
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What the CIPC annual return actually is
Every company and close corporation registered in South Africa must file an annual return with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission once a year. It is a short confirmation that the business still exists and that its registered details are current. It is not a tax return. Filing with SARS does nothing for CIPC, and a company entirely up to date on tax can still be struck off the register for missing this one form. That misunderstanding is the single most common reason owners believe they are compliant when they are not.
Why your deadline is different from everyone else's
There is no shared national due date. Your annual return falls due within 30 business days of the anniversary of your incorporation. Register on 3 March and your window runs each year from early March into April; register in September and yours falls in September. Nobody outside your own records knows the date, no national campaign reminds you of it the way tax season does, and the consequences of not knowing are severe.
The scale of that is not theoretical. Roughly 650,000 companies were deregistered during 2024, and from January 2025 CIPC began deregistering a further 800,000-plus for outstanding annual returns and Beneficial Ownership declarations. Against a register of about 2.25 million entities, that is a substantial share of the country's companies caught by a date they did not have written down.
Why "30 business days" is harder than it looks
Business days exclude weekends and South African public holidays — and that second part is where hand calculations go wrong. There are twelve public holidays. Ten sit on fixed dates, but Good Friday and Family Day move every year with Easter. On top of that, the Public Holidays Act provides that when a public holiday falls on a Sunday, the following Monday becomes a public holiday too, which silently shifts deadlines in some years and not others.
This calculator accounts for all of it, including the Easter calculation and the Sunday rule. What it cannot account for is a once-off public holiday declared by the President — 27 December 2022 was declared this way because Christmas fell on a Sunday and the Monday was already the Day of Goodwill. In a year like that, your real deadline may be a day later than shown.
Beneficial ownership: the filing that blocks the other one
Since 1 July 2024, CIPC has enforced a hard stop. If your Beneficial Ownership declaration has not been filed, you cannot complete your annual return at all — the system will not let the submission finish. A great many owners who think they merely forgot the annual return are actually blocked by a BO declaration they never knew existed. Newly incorporated companies must file BO within 10 business days of registration.
What happens when you miss it
Late penalties begin accruing once the 30-business-day window closes, and a R2,000 penalty applies once the return is more than 60 days outstanding. Miss two consecutive years and CIPC may begin deregistration proceedings. A deregistered company is published in the Government Gazette where banks, clients and suppliers can see it; it loses its legal standing, contracts and asset ownership are affected, and directors can become personally liable for the company's debts.
There is a commercial cost long before that point. A non-compliant CIPC status blocks most business finance and disqualifies you from tenders — compliance failures are widely cited as a barrier to South African small businesses reaching available funding. The R100 filing fee is not the number that matters here.
If you are already late
File the outstanding returns and the Beneficial Ownership declaration as soon as you can; the penalty stops growing once you are current. If the company has already been deregistered, reinstatement costs R200 and CIPC has automated the application, so supporting documents are no longer required unless you are lodging a court order. Once reinstated, every outstanding annual return and BO declaration falls due within 30 business days — miss that and the company can be deregistered a second time.
What this calculator cannot tell you
It performs a calendar calculation on the date you typed in. It does not connect to CIPC, so it cannot confirm that the date you entered matches CIPC's record, cannot see whether you have already filed this year, and cannot tell you your Beneficial Ownership status. Treat it as a planning aid, not a compliance status. For your actual standing, check your company on BizPortal or ask your accountant. Nothing on this page is legal or accounting advice.
Frequently asked questions
Is the CIPC annual return the same as my tax return?
No, and this is the most common and most expensive confusion. The annual return goes to CIPC and confirms your company still exists. Your tax return goes to SARS. Filing one does nothing for the other — a company fully paid up with SARS can still be deregistered by CIPC for missing annual returns.
Where do I find my company registration date?
It is on your CIPC registration certificate (form CoR 14.3), and the first four digits of your registration number are the year of registration. You can also look your company up free on BizPortal, though that requires a login and limits how many searches you may run.
What does it cost to file an annual return?
R100 for annual turnover under R1 million, and R450 for turnover between R1 million and R10 million. Higher turnover bands cost more — check CIPC’s published fee schedule for those. Late filing adds penalties on top, and they grow the longer the return is outstanding.
Does a dormant company still have to file an annual return?
Yes. A company that has never traded, has no bank account and no income still files an annual return every year, and is still deregistered if it does not. Dormancy is not an exemption, and dormant shelf companies are among the most commonly deregistered.
What is beneficial ownership and why does it block my annual return?
Since 1 July 2024 CIPC applies a hard stop: if your Beneficial Ownership declaration has not been filed, you cannot complete your annual return at all. Many owners who believe they simply forgot the annual return are in fact blocked by a missing BO declaration they did not know was required.
What happens if I have already been deregistered?
Reinstatement costs R200 and CIPC has automated the application, so supporting documents are no longer required unless you are lodging a court order. Once reinstated, every outstanding annual return and BO declaration falls due within 30 business days, or the company can be deregistered again.
How accurate is this date?
The arithmetic is exact for weekends and the twelve gazetted South African public holidays, including Good Friday and Family Day, which move with Easter, and any Monday that becomes a holiday because a fixed holiday fell on a Sunday. What it cannot predict is a once-off public holiday declared by the President — those have happened and would push the date out by one day in that year.