Return of Earnings (ROE) Submission in South Africa: 2026 Guide

What the Return of Earnings is

The Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act (COIDA) runs on a simple trade: employers pay an annual assessment to the Compensation Fund, and in return the Fund covers employees who are injured at work or contract a work-related disease. The Return of Earnings is how the Fund works out what each employer owes. Once a year you declare your total payroll on form W.As.8, the Fund multiplies it by your industry's risk rate, and the result is your assessment.

File the return and pay the assessment, and your company is in good standing: employees are covered, and the Fund will issue the Letter of Good Standing that tenders and construction sites ask for. Skip it, and the account goes into arrears. The Fund keeps assessing you anyway, on estimated figures, with penalties on top.

Who must file (including households)

Registration with the Compensation Fund is compulsory for any employer with one or more employees, and every registered employer must file the annual return. That covers:

• Companies with even a single employee, including a working director drawing a salary
• Sole proprietors and partnerships that employ staff
• Labour brokers and contractors supplying workers
• Private households that employ domestic workers

That last category is recent. Domestic workers were excluded from COIDA entirely until the Constitutional Court's Mahlanguruling in November 2020, a case brought by the daughter of Maria Mahlangu, a domestic worker who drowned in her employer's swimming pool in 2012 and whose family could claim nothing. The Court struck the exclusion down with retrospective effect, and households have been required to register and file since 2021. The Fund publishes a separate minimum assessment for domestic employers (R560, against R1,621 for commercial employers).

The 2026 deadline, and what to do if you missed it

COIDA itself says the return is due by 31 March each year. In practice the Fund publishes a submission window in the Government Gazette every season, and for years that window has opened on 1 April. The 2026 window ran from 1 April to 30 June 2026, covering actual earnings for 1 March 2025 to 28 February 2026 plus a provisional estimate for the year ahead. The Fund even takes the ROE system offline in the second half of March to get ready; employer body NEASA notified its members of the 2026 shutdown from 19 to 31 March.

If the deadline has passed, file anyway. The portal accepts late returns, and a late return with a penalty is a much smaller problem than an unfiled one: an unfiled return blocks your Letter of Good Standing, which in turn blocks tenders and site access, and the Fund raises estimated assessments against you in the meantime. Most of the companies that ask Govchain for help with COIDA are in exactly this position, usually because a tender deadline surfaced a letter that expired months earlier.

The Fund has shifted its dates before, and the next window (expected to open 1 April 2027) is only confirmed once gazetted. Check the notice on labour.gov.za before you plan around any date on this page.

What you declare on the W.As.8

Two sets of figures: actual gross earnings for the year just ended, and provisionalearnings for the year ahead. Earnings means remuneration before deductions: salaries and wages, regular overtime and bonuses, and directors' salaries. Each employee is capped at the published ceiling, which is R633,168 for the 2025/26 assessment year. Next year the Fund trues up the difference between what you estimated and what you actually paid.

Step-by-step: submitting on ROE Online

Submission is free and happens on the Compensation Fund's portal. A clean filing takes under an hour; a filing where the Fund's record of your company is out of date can take weeks, which is worth knowing before a tender deadline.

1. 1

   Log in to ROE Online

   Go to cfonline.labour.gov.za and sign in with your CF registration number. First-time users register a profile against the company’s Compensation Fund details. If the portal rejects your details, the Fund will ask for a Confirmation of Employer Registration Details form before you can proceed.
2. 2

   Open the current Return of Earnings

   Select the open assessment period. The return asks for two sets of figures: actual earnings for the year that ended in February, and a provisional estimate for the year ahead.
3. 3

   Capture earnings per employee category

   Declare gross earnings (before deductions) for each class of employee, capped at the annual ceiling per person. Directors who draw a salary count as employees.
4. 4

   Submit and download your assessment notice

   Once submitted, the Fund calculates your assessment at your industry’s rate and issues a notice of assessment. Keep the submission reference.
5. 5

   Pay the assessment (or arrange instalments)

   Payment is due within 30 days of the notice. The Fund allows instalment arrangements if the amount is a problem, but a Letter of Good Standing usually needs the account fully paid up or an arrangement in good standing.

How your assessment is calculated

Assessment = your industry's rate × the earnings you declared. The Fund groups employers into industry classes and prices each class by how dangerous the work is:

The Fund publishes the exact rate per class each year. Whatever the rate produces, minimum assessments apply: R1,621 for commercial employers and R560 for domestic employers. Payment is due within 30 days of the notice of assessment, and the Fund accepts instalment arrangements.

Penalties for late or non-submission

ROE and the Letter of Good Standing

The Fund only issues a Letter of Good Standing once the current Return of Earnings is filed and the assessment is paid or under an arrangement. The letter is valid for 12 months at most, so the annual rhythm is: file the ROE in the window, pay the assessment, renew the letter. Companies usually discover a gap in that rhythm the day a tender pack asks for a valid letter, at which point the outstanding return is the thing standing between them and the bid.