Filing season is open, which means the taxpayers who spend twenty minutes getting organised now will file in a fraction of the time it takes everyone else scrambling through inboxes and glove compartments in October. Whether you’re filing your own return or handing everything to us, having these five documents ready from day one is the single biggest thing you can do to make the process quick and painless.
Here’s your checklist.
1. IRP5 / IT3(a) certificates
This is the big one: your official certificate from every employer (or pension/annuity payer) you received income from during the tax year. It shows your total income, PAYE deducted, and any fringe benefits.
Worth checking: if you changed jobs, worked more than one job, or received any annuity income during the year, you need a separate certificate from each source not just your current employer. A missing IRP5 from an old job is one of the most common reasons a return ends up incomplete.
2. Medical aid tax certificate
Your medical scheme issues an annual tax certificate summarising your contributions for the year, which SARS uses to calculate your medical tax credit.
Worth checking: if you have significant qualifying medical expenses that you paid out of pocket, expenses your medical aid didn’t cover, keep those receipts too. They can be claimed separately and are easy to forget once the main certificate is in hand.
3. Retirement annuity certificate
If you contribute to a retirement annuity, your provider issues a certificate confirming the total contributions made during the tax year. This is a valuable one to have ready, since retirement contributions are tax-deductible up to certain limits.
Worth checking: this applies specifically to contributions made outside of a payroll deduction. If your retirement contributions already come off your payslip before tax, that portion is typically already reflected on your IRP5,the separate certificate matters most for additional contributions made directly to a provider.
4. Proof of additional income
If your income for the year included anything beyond a standard salary, freelance or consulting work, rental income, investment income, or a side business, you’ll need documentation for each of these: invoices issued, rental income received, dividend or interest certificates, and so on.
Worth checking: additional income is exactly the kind of thing that can be missed by an auto-assessment, since it often isn’t reported to SARS by a third party the way a salary is. If this applies to you, it’s worth assuming you’ll need to file (or check) your own return rather than relying on an auto-assessment alone.
5. Logbook (if you’re claiming travel)
If you receive a travel allowance or use a company car and want to claim against it, SARS requires a logbook recording business travel throughout the year, opening and closing odometer readings, dates, destinations, and the business purpose of each trip.
Worth checking: this is the document people most often try to reconstruct from memory in October, and it rarely goes well. A logbook has to be kept throughout the year to be valid, if you haven’t been keeping one, it’s worth starting now for next year, even if this year’s claim is limited by what you can accurately document.
The “get organised now” payoff
None of these documents are hard to get, most arrive automatically from employers, medical schemes and retirement providers in the weeks after tax year-end. The value isn’t in tracking them down at the last minute; it’s in having all five in one place before you sit down to file, so the actual submission takes minutes instead of evenings.
Want to skip the admin altogether? Send us your documents as they come in and we’ll handle the filing from there. Contact the CTF Services team on 086 111 1031 or info@ctfsa.co.za.
