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December Payroll and the 13th Cheque: The Rules Employers Actually Need
⚡ Quick answer A 13th cheque is not a legal entitlement — it exists only where the contract, a collective agreement or established practice creates it. Where paid, it is taxed as ordinary remuneration. December payroll itself needs an early run date, holiday pay rules applied, and the EMP201 prepared for 7 January. December is the payroll month with everything stacked against it: early bank cut-offs, public holidays, leave everywhere, and the 13th cheque question that arrives right on cue. Handled in November, it is routine; handled on 20 December, it is the month that ruins someone’s festive season — usually the employer’s. Here are the rules that matter and…
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Your Domestic Worker Needs a Payslip and UIF — Here Is the How
⚡ Quick answer If your domestic worker works 24 hours or more a month, you are an employer with legal duties: a written contract or particulars, a monthly payslip (even for cash wages), UIF registration on uFiling with monthly declarations (2% of wages — 1% from them, 1% from you), and COIDA registration with the Compensation Fund. The UIF cost on a R4,500 wage is R90 a month total. Admin Boss registers domestic employers for UIF (R450) and COIDA (R350). The household is South Africa’s most informal workplace — and the one where employer obligations are most often simply unknown. If a domestic worker helps in your home more than…
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uFiling Basics for Employers: The System Half of You Forgot
⚡ Quick answer uFiling (ufiling.co.za) is the Department of Employment & Labour’s online UIF system — the place where employee records, monthly remuneration declarations, terminations and UI-19 forms live. It is separate from SARS: your EMP201 pays the money, but uFiling keeps the record of who works for you and what they earn. Employers who only deal with SARS are half-compliant, and their employees’ claims fail at the counter. Register once, declare monthly by the 7th, and submit the UI-19 when anyone leaves. Ask a room of employers what uFiling is and half will guess it is part of SARS eFiling. It is not — and that misconception is the…
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Never Registered for UIF? The Fix, Step by Step
⚡ Quick answer If you never registered for UIF, the position is: you owe contributions back to when you should have registered, plus a 10% penalty and interest — and your employees currently cannot claim. The fix is a four-step routine: register with SARS and uFiling now, capture all employees, back-calculate and settle the arrears (or arrange payment), and file declarations monthly from now on. Thousands of businesses do this every year — it is uncomfortable, finite, and always cheaper than waiting for a claim or inspection to force it. If you have never registered for UIF — or registered years ago and never declared — you are in the…
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Part-Time Employees: Which Rights Apply and Which Do Not
⚡ Quick answer Part-time employees in South Africa have almost all the rights of full-time staff, mostly pro-rata: a written contract, payslips, the national minimum wage for every hour worked, pro-rata annual and sick leave, overtime rates after their agreed hours, and full CCMA protection. UIF applies once they work 24 hours or more a month for you. Employees working fewer than 24 hours a week are also protected against less favourable treatment than comparable full-timers unless the difference is just and equitable. Part-time employees occupy the most misunderstood corner of South African labour law — treated by too many employers as a category somehow outside the BCEA. They are…
