Why SARS and CIPC compliance still feels hard — and why It doesn’t have to?

06 February 2026
Tax Administration
Nestene Botha

For many accounting and secretarial professionals, SARS and CIPC compliance feels like a permanent state of pressure.

Deadlines loom. Documents arrive late or incomplete. Emails pile up. Administrative work spills into professional time. Partners end up reviewing everything because “it’s just quicker to do it myself.”

And yet, despite better software, more cloud tools, and even AI entering the profession, the work still feels… heavy.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Most compliance pain has very little to do with SARS or CIPC themselves — and everything to do with how the work flows through our firms.

The Hidden Cost of “Just Getting It Done”

In many practices, SARS and CIPC work is handled reactively.

A client emails. Someone responds. Another document is requested. Something is missing. A deadline is chased. A professional steps in “just to get it finished.”

Over time, this way of working creates:

Professionals doing admin-heavy work
Partners acting as quality control for everything
Inconsistent client experiences
Bottlenecks around deadlines
Burnout disguised as “busyness”

None of this is caused by a lack of competence.

It is caused by work arriving fragmented, unmanaged, and unscheduled.

Compliance Is Not a Task — It’s a Workflow

One of the biggest mindset shifts firms can make is this:

SARS and CIPC compliance is not a once-off task. It is a repeatable workflow.

And repeatable work should never live only in people’s heads.

When we step back, most compliance engagements follow the same broad stages:

Engagement
Scheduling
Information intake
Workpaper preparation
Requests and follow-ups
Data input
Review
Delivery

When these stages are not intentionally designed, the work defaults to email threads, memory, and last-minute intervention. That is when compliance starts feeling “hard”.

Why Effort Isn’t the Problem

Many firms try to solve this pressure by:

Working longer hours
Hiring more professionals
Adding another software tool
“Just pushing through” peak periods

But effort does not fix broken flow.

If documents arrive late, professionals will always feel under pressure.
If no one owns scheduling, deadlines will always feel urgent.
If intake is manual, chasing will always consume time.

The issue is not that people aren’t working hard enough.

It’s that the system is doing too little of the work.

Deskilling Without Lowering Standards

A powerful — and often misunderstood — opportunity in modern firms is deskilling with safeguards.

Deskilling does not mean:

Lowering quality
Removing professional judgement
Letting AI run unchecked

It means:

Designing workflows so admin teams manage predictable steps
Using AI to assist with repetitive preparation and validation
Reserving professional time for review, judgement, and decision-making
Building clear SOPs and layered review processes

When done properly, this approach:

Improves consistency
Reduces partner bottlenecks
Increases margins
Enhances the client experience
Gives professionals their time back

Why Technology Alone Doesn’t Fix This

Many firms already use good software. Some are experimenting with AI. Others have portals, document tools, or cloud-based tax systems.

Yet the pain persists.

That’s because tools without workflow design simply digitise chaos.

Technology works best when it is:

Placed at the right stage of the workflow
Used by the right role
Supported by clear process ownership
Integrated into an end-to-end system

Without that structure, even the best tools become just another thing to manage.

There Is a Better Way

SARS and CIPC compliance does not have to feel reactive, admin-heavy, or exhausting.

With structured workflows, intentional role design, and the right use of technology and AI, compliance work can become:

Predictable
Scalable
Less stressful
More profitable
More professional — for both firm and client

The shift is not about doing more.

It’s about designing better flow.

Experience the Workflow in Action

If this resonates with your experience — and you would like to see what structured, practical SARS and CIPC compliance workflows look like in practice — we explore how firms redesign compliance work to reduce pressure, improve flow, and reclaim professional time.

We unpack where technology fits, where AI adds value, what can safely be deskilled, and which resources are already available to firms directly from SARS and CIPC.

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