“I Just Wanted to Pay My Tax, Not Do a Degree in Accounting”: Why eFiling Feels Impossible (And How to Get Through It Without Losing a Day)
You open SARS eFiling.
The spinning wheel turns, the dashboard finally loads, you click into your company profile feeling brave… and then you see it:
That company tax return form.
Boxes everywhere. Codes you’ve never heard of. Acronyms that look like WiFi passwords.
You sit there thinking, “I just wanted to pay what I owe. Why does this feel like writing an exam in a subject I never studied?”
If that’s you, you’re not bad at business.
You’re just a human being trying to run a company in a system that was not designed with humans in mind.
Let’s unpack why this feels so impossible — and what a realistic, no-drama path through it actually looks like.
The moment eFiling breaks your brain
Picture this.
You’ve been telling yourself for weeks: “I’ll do the company tax this weekend.” You finally sit down with coffee, bank statements, and good intentions.
You:
- Log in to eFiling.
- Click your company profile.
- See a notification that a return is due.
- Open the return form.
And suddenly:
- There are sections you don’t recognise.
- You’re being asked about things you’ve never heard your accountant mention.
- There are fields in ALL CAPS shouting at you.
- You’re terrified that one wrong number could trigger an audit or a penalty.
So you do what most small business owners do:
You close the tab.
Tell yourself you’ll “look at it again later”.
Later becomes the last week of the deadline.
Now you’re stressed, rushing, and even more scared of getting it wrong.
Not because you’re lazy.
Because the whole process is set up in a way that assumes you’re already fluent in tax and accounting.
You’re not. You’re fluent in your business, not in SARS.
Why eFiling feels like a foreign language (it’s not just you)
There are a few reasons eFiling feels so confusing, especially for companies.
1. It was designed for tax professionals, not founders
If you’ve ever thought, “Surely accountants find this easy,” — you’re right.
Most of eFiling, especially the company tax sections, are laid out for people who:
- Already understand tax law
- Know what all the fields mean
- Have done this thousands of times
If you’re coming in as a small business owner, you’re being asked to swim in the deep end with people who do this for a living.
You’re not stupid.
You’re just not a tax practitioner.
2. It mixes three jobs into one screen
When you open that company tax return, SARS is actually asking you for three different things at once:
- Your accounting story – How much the business made and spent, as per your records.
- Your tax story – How that accounting info is adjusted for tax rules (what’s actually taxable or deductible).
- Their admin story – All the extra classifications, codes, and disclosures they need for their own systems.
But on eFiling, it’s all merged into one intimidating form.
You just want to answer: “How much did we make, what did we spend, what do we owe?”
Instead, you’re dragged into:
- Capital allowances
- Wear and tear
- Assessed losses
- Special codes for different income types
Most small businesses don’t need to understand every one of those fields.
But the system doesn’t tell you which ones matter for you.
3. You’re scared of choosing “wrong”
Tax comes with a built-in fear factor.
You’re not just filling in a form.
You’re thinking:
“If I tick the wrong box, will I:
– Get a penalty?
– Trigger an audit?
– Look like I’m lying?”
That fear makes every field feel bigger than it is.
So you overthink things. Or avoid them entirely.
4. Your bookkeeping and your tax reality don’t quite match
Here’s the quiet truth for a lot of small businesses:
- Your bank is up to date.
- Your invoices exist.
- Your expenses are real.
But your books (the organised version of all that) might be:
- In a spreadsheet that only half makes sense
- Sitting in accounting software that’s not fully reconciled
- Scattered between WhatsApp, email, and PDFs
When SARS asks for a clean summary of your year, you’re scrambling to piece the puzzle together.
eFiling feels impossible because you’re trying to build the car and drive it and pass roadworthy at the same time.
What actually matters for a small business (and what you can stop panicking about)
Let’s simplify.
No matter how complex the eFiling screen looks, SARS is mainly trying to answer a few core questions about your company.
Think of it like this. SARS wants to know:
- Did the company exist and trade during this year?
Not trading, dormant, trading at a loss – they just need clarity. - Roughly how much did it earn?
Sales, services, once-off income – the top line. - Roughly what did it cost to run?
Rent, salaries, suppliers, software, fuel, etc. - Are there any special situations?
Big assets, loans to owners, prior year losses, etc. - Based on all that, what’s the taxable profit or loss?
And therefore, what tax do you actually owe?
Everything else you see on that form is mostly how they want it categorised.
It feels like 200 questions, but it’s all versions of those same five.
The trick is not to understand every field.
The trick is to know which parts are critical for you.
The eFiling form, de-mystified: your “zoomed out” map
Imagine you could zoom out of the company tax return and see its structure.
It roughly breaks down into:
- Company basics
– Who are you?
– What’s your year-end?
– Did you trade? - Income
– Normal business income (your main sales)
– Other income (interest, once-off items, etc.) - Expenses / deductions
– Operating costs (rent, salaries, etc.)
– Tax-specific items (wear and tear, bad debts, etc.) - Special sections (if they apply)
– Assets, capital allowances
– Assessed losses from prior years
– Loans, related party stuff - Tax calculation and summary
– Taxable income or loss
– Tax due / refund
– Provisional tax already paid
If you’re a small company without complex structures, the real battle is usually just:
- Getting your income and expenses into a clean, accurate summary
- Understanding whether you actually traded, made a profit, broke even, or made a loss
Once that’s clear, the form becomes data capture.
Still annoying, but less existential.
The lie we tell ourselves: “I must figure all of this out on my own”
A lot of founders and small business owners quietly carry this belief:
“If I’m a real business owner, I should be able to handle my own tax.”
So you:
- Open eFiling
- Suffer in silence
- Spend hours Googling things you don’t fully understand
- Hope your guess is close enough
But here’s the thing.
You don’t insist on fixing your own car.
You don’t write your own legal contracts from scratch.
You don’t build your own banking app.
Why is tax the one place you’ve decided you must DIY or you’re not legit?
The real mark of a serious founder isn’t doing everything yourself.
It’s knowing what to own, what to understand at a high level, and what to delegate to specialists so you can focus on the part only you can do: building the business.
You don’t have to become a tax expert.
You just need enough clarity to:
- Not be surprised
- Not be non-compliant
- Not hand over your entire day (or weekend) to a system that could be handled better
A realistic, sanity-saving way to get your company tax done
Let’s talk about what this could look like if it didn’t mean losing a whole day and your last nerve.
Step 1: Separate two different jobs in your head
Right now, you’re probably trying to do these at the same time:
- Job A: Figure out your numbers (What did we earn? What did we spend?)
- Job B: Translate those numbers into SARS language on eFiling
If you try to do both simultaneously while staring at the eFiling screen, you will hate your life.
Do them in order.
Job A: Get your numbers into shape.
This is where tools like Govchain Books quietly change the game:
- All your invoices, payments, and expenses captured in one place
- You can see your year at a glance instead of hunting through email and PDFs
- When tax time comes, your picture is already mostly clear
If your books are a mess right now, it’s not a character flaw.
It just means the first job is to organise reality – once.
After that, it gets easier every year.
Job B: Turn that clear picture into a return.
This is where Govchain Tax comes in:
- We work from your organised numbers (or help you get there)
- We handle the translation into SARS’ form and language
- We submit via eFiling on your company’s profile, correctly, on time
You still understand what’s going on.
You’re just not the one wrestling with the form at 10pm.
Step 2: Decide your level of involvement
Not everyone wants the same level of control.
Some founders want to:
- See the final numbers
- Understand how the tax was calculated
- Review before anything is filed
Others say:
- “Just tell me what’s due and when, and don’t let SARS shout at me.”
Both are valid.
A good partner doesn’t take power away from you.
They make it easy to stay in control without needing to do every micro-step.
With Govchain, most businesses land somewhere in the middle:
- They use Govchain Books to make sure the numbers are always up to date.
- They lean on Govchain Tax to handle the technical filing.
- They layer on Govchain Compliance™ to keep an eye on the bigger picture: CIPC, SARS, annual returns, and all the little admin things that can quietly cause penalties or deregistration.
So tax time stops being a shock. It becomes a step in a managed process.
Step 3: Stop tying your self-worth to eFiling
You are not “bad at business” because you struggle with a company tax form.
You are:
- Running operations
- Managing staff or freelancers
- Chasing clients
- Doing marketing and sales
- Handling suppliers
If you also expect yourself to decode SARS forms like a professional tax consultant, you’re setting yourself up for burnout.
You don’t need to be proud of suffering through eFiling alone.
You can be proud that your company is:
- Compliant
- Up to date
- Penalty-free
And that you’ve designed your admin life to support you, not punish you.
The before/after of eFiling, when you’re not doing it alone
Here’s what this usually looks like in real life.
Before
- White-knuckling your way into eFiling once or twice a year
- Praying your guesses on the form are “close enough”
- Letting tax deadlines sneak up on you
- Panicking about dormant companies you never quite closed
- Avoiding tenders or bigger contracts because you’re scared a missing return or Tax Clearance Pin will expose how messy things are
After
- Your bookkeeping is handled in Govchain Books, so you always have a living picture of your income and expenses
- Govchain Tax files your company tax properly, through your SARS profile
- Govchain Compliance™ watches the boring stuff — annual returns, SARS status, CIPC status — so you don’t get surprise penalties
- A Tax Clearance Pin or Letter of Good Standing isn’t a scramble; it’s just a request we process
- You spend your energy on sales, delivery, hiring, strategy — not tabs of government portals
Same company. Same founder.
Different system around you.
If you did nothing else after reading this…
If this is the only thing you take away, let it be this:
eFiling feels impossible not because you’re incapable, but because you’re being asked to do three jobs that were never meant to be one.
Your options are not:
- Suffer alone and hope you did it right, or
- Ignore it and hope SARS forgets
There’s a middle path where:
- Your numbers are organised for you (Govchain Books)
- Your tax returns are handled by people who live in eFiling so you don’t have to (Govchain Tax)
- Your bigger compliance picture is quietly monitored in the background (Govchain Compliance™)
All online. One place. No sitting in queues. No printing forms. No “we’ll get back to you in 5–7 working days” from three different departments.
You don’t have to love tax.
You just have to stop letting it own your calendar and your stress levels.
If company tax on eFiling currently feels like a wall you keep running into, the real question isn’t, “How do I push harder?”
It’s, “Who can help me build a door through it?”
That’s the gap Govchain exists to fill for South African small businesses.
When you’re ready, you don’t need to start with a big commitment.
You can simply:
- Get a free compliance health check to see where you stand with SARS and CIPC, or
- Start using Govchain Books so that next time tax season comes around, you’re not starting from a shoebox of invoices and a headache.
From there, eFiling stops being a monster.
It becomes just another boring, manageable part of running a real, grown-up business — with the right backup in your corner.