IRP5 and ITR12, explained in plain English

The IRP5: what it is and who gives it to you

An IRP5 is the employee tax certificate for one tax year, which runs from 1 March to the last day of February. Your employer generates it from its payroll when it reconciles with SARS. If no tax was deducted from you at all, for example because you earned under the threshold, the same certificate is called an IT3(a). Every employer who registered for PAYE has to produce one for every person it paid.

The certificate is not really for you; it is for SARS. Employers submit their annual reconciliation, the EMP501, together with all the employee certificates, between 1 April and 31 May. SARS matches what the employer declared against what was paid over, and then uses the certificate to pre-fill your return. That is why, when Filing Season opens on 1 July, your salary and PAYE are usually already on your ITR12 before you type a thing.

Reading the codes

Every amount on an IRP5 sits against a four-digit SARS source code. The ones most people need:

Two checks worth doing every year: that 4102 on the certificate matches the PAYE on your payslips added up, and that your identity number and tax number on the certificate are yours. A certificate with the wrong ID number does not attach to your profile and your return shows no income.

No IRP5? Here is what SARS says to do

1. Ask the employer or ex-employer for it in writing and keep the request. Many employers simply have not reconciled yet; that is fixable on their side.
2. Check your eFiling return. If the certificate has been submitted to SARS it appears there even when nobody handed you a copy.
3. If the employer still does not provide it, SARS’s guidance is to visit a branch or call the contact centre with all your payslips for the year, bank statements showing the salary being paid into your account, and a copy of your employment contract if you have one, and SARS will advise how to complete the return.
4. Do not invent an IRP5 number. SARS is explicit that a return cannot simply carry a made-up certificate number.

An employer that deducted PAYE and never paid it over, or never reconciled, is breaking the law, not you. Your payslips and bank statements are your proof of what was deducted, and SARS pursues the employer for the money.

The ITR12: what happens to the certificate

The ITR12 is the individual income tax return. SARS builds it from third-party data: your IRP5s, the certificate from your medical scheme, the retirement annuity certificate, the IT3(b) interest and IT3(c) capital gains certificates from banks and brokers. You add what those parties cannot know: other income such as rent or freelance work, out-of-pocket medical costs, a travel logbook against a 3701 allowance, a home office, donations with a section 18A certificate.

Since 2020 SARS has been issuing auto-assessments to people whose affairs are simple enough to work out from the third-party data alone. In 2026 the notices went out from 1 to 12 July. If the auto-assessment is right you do nothing. If it is missing something, you edit and file the return by the deadline. After the deadline the auto-assessment stands as if you had filed it.

The result of a filed return is the ITA34, the notice of assessment. It states the refund due to you or the amount you owe SARS, and the payment date. Refunds normally follow within a few business days unless SARS selects the return for verification, in which case it asks for the documents behind your claims.

The 2026 dates

Tax threshold below which no tax is payable, for people under 65: R95 750 for the year to 28 February 2026 and R99 000 for the year to 28 February 2027, from the Budget 2026 tax guide. Earning under the threshold does not always mean you may skip filing; more than one employer, a travel allowance or any other income can still make a return compulsory.

What actually goes wrong

• Accepting an auto-assessment that is missing a second job or the medical expenses. It becomes your return the day after the deadline.
• Claiming a travel deduction with no logbook. Code 3701 puts the allowance in your income; only a logbook takes it out again, and SARS asks for it on verification.
• Changing jobs and only having one IRP5 on the return. Both employers must reconcile; chase the one that has not.
• Filing late. SARS charges a fixed monthly administrative penalty for each outstanding return, scaled to income, until it is filed.
• Not knowing you are provisional. Rental or freelance income above small limits makes you a provisional taxpayer with two estimated payments a year and the later January deadline.

Frequently asked questions