Business type: professional and creative work

Read Core: applies to everyone first. This file adds the rules that apply when you sell your skill or your time.

This covers consultants, designers, developers, copywriters, photographers, videographers, tutors, bookkeepers, virtual assistants, translators, and marketers.

This is the lightest-regulation business type in South Africa. You can usually invoice tomorrow.

What you need

Almost certainly nothing beyond the core files. No municipal licence, no health inspection, no product regulation.

Two exceptions.

Some professions are statutorily regulated and may not be practised without registration: accountants signing off certain work, auditors, financial advisors under FAIS, estate agents, engineers signing designs, architects, attorneys, and health professionals. If you hold a professional title, check your body's rules on practising independently.

If you give financial advice or sell financial products, you need an FSP licence under FAIS or you must be a representative of a licensed FSP. Calling it "coaching" does not change the legal position.

The turnover tax trap

This is the most important tax point for this group, and it is easy to miss.

Turnover tax looks attractive: 0% on the first R600,000 of turnover. But most of this group cannot use it.

Certain businesses are excluded, such as professional service providers, labour brokers, personal service providers, and businesses carrying on other excluded activities.

A business is excluded where more than 20% of income comes from professional services.

The exclusion catches accountants, lawyers, engineers, architects, consultants and similar. Whether a designer, developer, or copywriter falls inside the exclusion is not always obvious.

Check the SARS list for your exact trade before you elect turnover tax. Electing it wrongly and having SARS reverse it later is expensive.

If you cannot use turnover tax, your levers are the ones in Tax and SARS: claim every real expense, stay below the threshold while you are small, and consider the home office deduction if you qualify.

The home office deduction

This group qualifies more often than others, because the work genuinely happens at home.

SARS generally expects a specific part of the home used regularly and exclusively for the trade, and properly equipped for it. A dedicated room qualifies. The kitchen table does not.

If you qualify, you can claim a share of rent or bond interest, rates, and electricity based on floor area. Measure the room, measure the house, keep a photo and the calculation on file.

Contracts matter more here than anywhere else

Your risk is not a faulty product. It is scope creep and non-payment.

Use the service agreement prompt in Documents and templates. Make sure it covers:

What is included, in specific deliverables, not vague descriptions.

How many rounds of revision are included, and what an extra round costs. "Two rounds of revisions included" is the single most valuable line in a creative contract.

Who owns the work when it is finished, and when ownership transfers. Standard practice: ownership transfers on full payment, not on delivery. This is your leverage when an invoice goes unpaid.

What happens if the client cancels midway, and what you are owed for work already done.

Payment terms, and what happens when they are missed.

Intellectual property

By default in South African law, the person who creates a work generally owns the copyright, unless it was made by an employee in the course of employment or the contract says otherwise.

That means your client does not automatically own what you made for them, unless your contract transfers it. Most clients assume they do.

Deal with it explicitly. Either transfer ownership on full payment, or licence the work for a defined use. Say which, in writing, before you start.

If you use AI tools to produce client work, say so in your contract, and understand that the copyright position for AI-generated material is unsettled. Do not promise a client exclusive ownership of something you cannot guarantee.

Getting paid

Freelancers in South Africa lose more money to late payment than to low rates.

Deposit up front. 50% is normal for project work. No deposit, no start.

Invoice on a fixed day, every month, with clear due dates. See Documents and templates.

State your late payment terms in the contract, and apply them. Interest on overdue amounts is enforceable if it was agreed in advance.

Withhold final files until final payment. This only works if your contract says ownership transfers on payment, which is why that clause matters.

Tax point most freelancers miss

If you work mainly for one client, who controls your hours and how you work, SARS may treat you as a personal service provider or as an employee. That changes your tax treatment significantly and removes most of your deductions.

Signs of risk: one client providing most of your income, working set hours at their premises, using their equipment, having a manager.

If that describes you, get advice. It is fixable, but not after an assessment.

Branding and marketing notes

Use Branding and marketing. For this group, the priority order is different from a local trade:

1. Portfolio of actual work, even two or three pieces
2. A clear description of what you do and who you do it for
3. LinkedIn, if you sell to businesses
4. Referrals from past clients, asked for directly
5. A simple website

The naming prompt in Branding prompts works, but consider trading under your own name. For a solo consultant or creative, "Naledi Mokoena Design" often builds more trust than an invented agency name, and it never becomes a lie when someone asks how big the team is.

Your checklist

Your checklist

Confirm whether your profession requires statutory registration Check whether you are excluded from turnover tax before electing it Build a service agreement covering scope, revisions, IP and payment Decide your deposit and revision policy, and stick to it Set up the home office calculation if you qualify Register as a provisional taxpayer and diarise the IRP6 dates Assess whether you look like an employee of one client, and fix it if so

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