As of July 1, 2018, post the mandate released by the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) in South Africa, companies have come under tremendous pressure to implement the filing of Annual Financial Statements (AFS) in iXBRL format and have several queries about the process of implementing iXBRL. iXBRL format is a structured, transparent and efficient data format and has a wide range of uses, unlike the erstwhile PDF format which was being used till the month of July 2018.
In the previous blog, we talked about which qualifying entities fall under the category of filing in iXBRL with the CIPC. We now take a closer look at when to file your AFS, if you have to file so as to avert a fine levied by the CIPC.
Filing Criteria for Entities
The CIPC has around 1.8 million active registered entities. A sub-set of these entities- approximately 0.1 million companies qualify to file their AFSs in iXBRL format. These are:-
- All public companies
- Qualifying Private companies
- State-owned companies
- Non-profit entities
- Qualifying Closed Corporations
Timeline to file
Companies need to file their AFS, 30 days from the date of incorporation and Closed Corporations need to file within 60 days from their incorporation date.
For instance,
A company’s fiscal year ends on March 31st, 2018, and the company is incorporated on March 25th, 1990. This Company will need to file its AFS within 30 days from the date of incorporation- i.e. April 25th. In this case, since the Annual report for March 31, 2018, may not be ready for such a short span of time, the Companies are required to file their previous year’s report – i.e. March 31, 2017 AFS in iXBRL format. If the same company was incorporated towards the end of the year, say November 1st, 1995, it will need to file the AFS by December 1. In such a case, the Company can file its March 31, 2018 report since it would be ready and approved by then.
Consequences of not filing within the given time period
Failure to submit AFS to the CIPC on time could lead to a non-compliance penalty amounting to 10% of the turnover or a maximum of R 1 000 000 million. This is because the CIPC requires expects more entities to be compliant with this new mandate.
For more information, please read the non-compliance penalty and the Hard-Stop notices issued by the CIPC.
While these were just some basic details about the filing criteria, should you have any queries about the mandate or how to file with CIPC, please reach out to us at info@iriscarbon.com.
