Where IRP6 Submissions Go Wrong
The IRP6 is a short form with long consequences. Most of the money provisional taxpayers lose to SARS — penalties, interest, or simply cash locked up unnecessarily — traces back to a handful of recurring mistakes. Here are the seven we see most, roughly in order of expense.
1. Accepting the Basic Amount Without Thinking
The pre-populated basic amount is your last assessed taxable income, escalated by 8% per year where the assessment is more than 18 months old. If your practice has grown faster than that — common for anyone a few years into freelancing — paying on the basic amount quietly builds a debt that lands in February.
The reverse error also costs: if your income has dropped, blindly paying on the basic amount overpays SARS, and you wait for your ITR12 assessment to see that cash again. The basic amount is a reference point. Your actual half-year numbers are the estimate.
2. Forgetting the Estimate Covers the Full Year
The August IRP6 asks for your taxable income for the entire 2026/27 year — not the six months you've lived through. Estimating only the year-to-date figure roughly halves your true liability and sets up a paragraph 20 underestimation problem in February. Annualise first, then adjust for what you know about the months ahead.
3. Ignoring PAYE Already Withheld
If any client treats you as an employee for withholding purposes — or you have a part-time salaried role alongside the freelance work — PAYE has already been paid on your behalf. The IRP6 has a field for employees' tax deducted; skipping it means paying the same tax twice and waiting for assessment to recover it. Pull your payslips or IRP5 data before you file.
4. Leaving Out Deductions — Especially s11F
Provisional tax is calculated on estimated taxable income, after deductions. Estimating gross income and skipping the deduction side inflates every payment. The big ones: business expenses you can support, home office costs where you qualify, travel per your logbook, and retirement contributions under s11F — deductible up to 27.5% of the greater of remuneration or taxable income, capped at R430,000 for the year. If you plan to contribute to an RA through the year, the estimate may reflect it.
5. Confusing Submission With Payment
Submitting the IRP6 on eFiling does nothing to move money. Payment is a separate step, and the deadline applies to cleared payment, not intention. A return submitted on 31 August with payment initiated that evening can still reflect late — and late payment attracts an immediate 10% penalty under paragraph 27, plus interest. Submit early, pay early, and check the payment actually reflects against the right tax type and period.
6. Missing the Return Entirely Because "No Money Was Due"
Two versions of this mistake. The first: assuming that because you expect a refund or minimal liability, no return is needed — registered provisional taxpayers should submit even when the calculated payment is nil, and a nil estimate must be genuinely justifiable for the full year. The second: assuming SARS will remind you. eFiling notifications are easy to miss, and the obligation exists whether or not a reminder arrives. Diarise both periods: 31 August and 28 February.
7. No Working Paper Behind the Number
When SARS queries an estimate — more common at the second period, but possible at the first — the question is how you arrived at it. Taxpayers who can produce a dated, one-page calculation showing income to date, annualisation logic, and deductions have a short conversation. Taxpayers who reverse-engineer a justification months later have a long one, because the burden of showing the estimate was seriously calculated sits with you.
The Pattern Behind All Seven
Every one of these mistakes comes from treating the IRP6 as an isolated form to be dispatched twice a year, rather than the output of a running picture of your income and deductions. Freelancers who track income monthly don't scramble to annualise; those who log expenses as they occur don't estimate gross; those who diarise both deadlines never discover the 10% penalty empirically.
With two weeks to the deadline, there's time to do this properly. Build the estimate from your actual numbers, document the logic, submit early, and confirm the payment cleared. February-you will inherit either a solid model or a mess — and February is the period where estimates carry penalties.