Every year, domestic employers must send a Return of Earnings to the Compensation Fund in a filing window the Fund announces. In 2026 it ran from 1 April to 30 June. Under the COIDA Amendment Act, if you send it late the Compensation Fund can assess you on estimated earnings and add a penalty of 10% of the amount assessed. The minimum yearly assessment for a household employer is R560.00, so a late submission means paying more than you have to. The simplest way to avoid it is to submit early in April, while the online portal is still fast.
What the Return of Earnings is
The Return of Earnings is a declaration of how much you paid your employee over the past year, together with an estimate of what you will pay them in the coming year. This calculation sets your annual COIDA assessment fee.
Since the 2020 Constitutional Court ruling, domestic workers are fully included under the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act (COIDA). Your home is officially a registered workplace. If your domestic worker slips while washing floors, or your gardener is injured using equipment, the Compensation Fund covers their medical costs and compensation for time off while they recover (for the first 3 months you pay that compensation and the Fund repays you). It protects your employee from large medical bills, and it protects you from personal liability. That protection only works if your paperwork is up to date.
When you must submit
Each year the Compensation Fund announces a filing window for the Return of Earnings, and all employers must submit within it. In 2026 it ran from 1 April to 30 June. Large companies have whole HR and payroll teams for this. For a private household employing a domestic worker, a nanny or a gardener, the job usually lands on you after a long day.
The new 10% penalty
For years, many household employers treated the June deadline as a loose suggestion, because enforcement was patchy. The COIDA Amendment Act changes that.
Under the Act, in force since 23 January 2026, the Compensation Commissioner, who runs the Fund, can assess a household that files late on estimated earnings and add a penalty of 10% of the amount assessed. It is not automatic, but you cannot count on it being waived. The minimum assessment for household employers is R560.00 per year for 2026. Paying a penalty on top of that base fee is money wasted, and household budgets are already stretched by rising food costs, high interest rates and rising electricity tariffs.
Submitting late also means you cannot get a Letter of Good Standing. Without that document, your household is exposed to the very liability COIDA is meant to cover.
Submit early to avoid the portal problems
The admin is the main frustration for most households. The Department's online CF-Filing portal is known for technical glitches, timeouts and a poor user experience.
Most people wait until the last weeks of the window to log in. When tens of thousands of users hit the servers at once, the system often buckles: pages refuse to load, and OTPs never arrive.
You can avoid all of this by acting early. The portal is usually fast in the first few days of April. Getting in early means you can finish the process in about ten minutes, instead of spending days refreshing a frozen page.
What if you have not registered yet?
If you have never registered your domestic worker for COIDA, now is a good time to fix it. Many people fear that coming forward will trigger large backdated fines.
The Department of Employment and Labour encourages compliance above all. Registering late is better than staying outside the system. Registration uses the CF-1E form (the application to register as a domestic worker employer), with a copy of your ID, proof of your home address, a copy of your worker's ID and her employment contract. Once registered, you receive your CF registration number, which lets you submit your returns and pay your assessment. The steps are in COIDA for domestic workers.
Delaying only increases your risk. If a serious accident happens at your home and you are not registered, you could be held personally liable for hospital bills and ongoing compensation. The R560 annual fee is cheap cover compared with the cost of private emergency medical care.
What to have ready
Your CF registration number, your ID number, what you actually paid your worker from 1 March 2025 to 28 February 2026, and what you expect to pay her from 1 March 2026 to 28 February 2027 at the new R30.23 minimum wage. The assessment is 1.04% of what you pay in a year, with a minimum of R560: about R654 a year for a worker on the minimum wage for 40 hours a week, and about R736 on 45 hours. The full walk-through is in the Return of Earnings guide.
How AskMandla helps
COIDA registration and the annual Return of Earnings are handled by our team behind the scenes, so our customers do not log in to the portal at all. The earnings totals come from the payslips we already run, we file in the Fund's window, and we tell you the assessment when the notice arrives so you can pay it within 30 days. It is part of the full service, R450 once-off per worker and then R49 a month, with no extra fee for COIDA. See COIDA registration and Return of Earnings.