Every year, domestic employers must send a Return of Earnings to the Compensation Fund between 1 April and 30 June. For the 2026 cycle, sending it late automatically adds a 10% penalty to your assessment fee. 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 a portion of their wages while they recover. 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
Every year, between 1 April and 30 June, all employers must submit their Return of Earnings to the Compensation Fund. 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.
For the 2026 cycle, a late submission automatically adds a 10% penalty on top of your assessed fee. 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 final week of May 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. Online registration needs a copy of your ID, a copy of your employee's ID, and a basic employment contract. Once registered, you receive your CF registration number, which lets you submit your returns and pay your assessment.
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.
Your step-by-step submission plan
Have everything in front of you before you log in.
Step 1: work out last year's actual earnings
Calculate the actual earnings you paid your employee between 1 March 2025 and 28 February 2026. Include their basic wage and any regular cash allowances, such as a separate transport payment. Do not include discretionary gifts or severance pay. As a guide, if you paid the 2025 minimum wage of R28.79 per hour for a standard 160-hour month, your annual total would be about R55,276.
Step 2: estimate this year's earnings
Calculate the projected earnings for the current year, from 1 March 2026 to 28 February 2027. Factor in the 2026 National Minimum Wage of R30.23 per hour. You can check the current rate with the Fair Wage Calculator. The system uses this projection to calculate your assessment. Because domestic wages fall well below the maximum earnings threshold of R633,168 per year, the full salary is assessable. Even so, most households find their final invoice just reaches the minimum R560 baseline.
Step 3: gather your reference numbers
You will need your CF registration number, your ID number and your employee's ID number.
Final step: submit on the portal
Log into the CF-Filing portal. Enter your actual earnings for the past year and your projected earnings for the year ahead, then submit the return. The system generates an invoice called a Notice of Assessment. You then pay this amount by EFT, using the specific reference number shown on the invoice.
How AskMandla helps
Most domestic employers want to do the right thing and protect their staff if an accident happens. The barrier is usually the confusing admin and the fear of making a mistake on a complicated government website.
Getting this done in April buys you peace of mind for the year. You avoid the 10% penalty, you dodge the late-May website crashes, and you keep a vital safety net in place for the person who helps keep your household running.
AskMandla helps you track hours, manage payslips and store your wage records securely. When April comes around, you will have your exact annual totals ready to copy across.