COIDA Registration

If you employ anyone, this is not optional

COIDA is the compensation scheme covering employees who are injured or made ill at work. Registration with the Compensation Fund is required of any employer in South Africa, and it applies from the point you have staff, not from the point somebody gets hurt.

It sits entirely outside CIPC and outside SARS. Your company being registered and tax compliant says nothing at all about your COIDA status.

What we do

Enrol the business with the Compensation Fund, submit the business and employee details the enrolment needs, file the required documentation, and return proof of enrolment.

What we need

Company name, registration number in the 2023/123456/07 format, and your number of employees. That last figure is not a formality: assessments are calculated on earnings, so it feeds directly into what the Fund charges you. If you are unsure whether a particular working arrangement makes you an employer, ask before assuming it does not.

If the business has employed people for a while without ever registering, say so when you order rather than presenting the company as a brand-new employer. Catching that up is ordinary work, and it is far easier to handle at the start of a file than after the Fund has queried it.

Enrolment is not proof

Being registered and being able to prove you are current are two different things, and clients ask for the second. Enrolment gets you into the system. The Letter of Good Standing is what a procurement officer actually accepts, and it depends on your Returns of Earnings and assessments being up to date.

Registration is the start, not the end

Once enrolled the obligation is ongoing. Annual Returns of Earnings keep the account current, and a current account is what makes a Letter of Good Standing possible.

If a client or a tender has already asked you for that letter, the service you want is COIDA Letter of Good Standing, which includes bringing outstanding returns and assessments up to date first. Ordering plain registration when you actually need the letter is the most common mix-up between these two pages.

What your first employee triggers

Hiring sets off several registrations at once, from different authorities:

• PAYE and UIF with SARS, before the first salary is paid — SARS tax registration
• SDL with SARS, once annual payroll passes the threshold
• COIDA with the Compensation Fund, which is this page

A director drawing a salary is being paid, which surprises founders of one-person companies more often than it should.

Related

• COIDA Letter of Good Standing — the proof-of-compliance document
• CIDB Grade 1 — construction tender files want COIDA in place
• Construction company bundle — COIDA bundled with the incorporation

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