The Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (Cipro) has extended the deadline for filing annual returns until 21 February, as a last minute rush causes the office's systems to slow down.
Cipro says the extension is due to the large volume of calls and enquiries it is experiencing around the need to file annual returns. If companies do not file returns, they will be deregistered from Cipro's database.
The office had initially set an October deadline, but pushed this out to the end of December after requests from the business community, and again to today due to the festive season break, says head of communications Elsabie Conradie.
Conradie says the latest extension was as a result of a last minute rush, which caused its system to slow down and some customers have experienced a time out error message as a result.
The Companies Act requires that all companies file an annual return providing up-to-date information with the agency. If companies do not file, Cipro assumes they are no longer in business, and deregisters them.
Don't delay
Closed corporations must file returns in the month in which they were registered, even if some of these entities are shelf companies. Cipro has also extended its office hours and will now be open until 6pm for companies to lodge returns.
Acting CEO Lungile Dukwana said last week that the office had “already noticed an increase in the number of lodgements”.
Dukwana says Cipro would like to give all businesses an opportunity to lodge returns before final deregistration is implemented. However, he cautions “customers should not wait until the last moment to lodge annual returns as this may be unpleasant due to high volumes”.
In the middle of last year, Cipro's offices were unable to cope with the volume of returns, and its electronic site stalled.
It was subsequently revealed, in September, that Cipro had deregistered 750 000 companies in one day. The Democratic Alliance's then shadow minister of trade and industry Andricus van der Westhuizen said at the time that this accounted for almost a quarter of all the entities that were registered over the last 200 years.
A list of non-compliant companies is available on Cipro's Web site.
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