Core: start here
This toolkit is for one person running a business in South Africa. You are the owner. You are also the only worker. You have little money and little time.
Core: applies to everyone
Register, tax, licences and money rules for every business.
11 pages
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Register: what you actually need
Most advice tells you to register a company first. For a one-person business earning under about R500,000 a year, that is usually the wrong first move.
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Tax and SARS
Numbers here are for the tax year 1 March 2026 to 28 February 2027. They changed a lot in the February 2026 Budget. Check www.sars.gov.za before you file.
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What you need to sell things
Some businesses may not trade until they hold a licence. Others need nothing. This file tells you which one you are.
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Vehicles and your business
Most one-person businesses should not put the vehicle in the business name. Read the tax section before you do the paperwork.
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Running a Pty Ltd
What a company costs you in time and duties every year, what goes wrong when you stop filing, and when the company does not protect you.
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Paying yourself from a Pty Ltd
The money in the company bank account is not yours. It belongs to the company.
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Adding new lines of business
You started with one thing. Now you want to add another: a vehicle dealer adding a tyre shop, a mechanic adding parts sales, a designer adding printing.
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Working from home and meeting safely
Many one-person businesses have no shop, no yard and no office. The business lives on a phone.
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You are the business
Everything else in this toolkit is about the business. This one is about you, because in a one-person business you are not the owner of the asset. You are the asset.
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Closing as a sole proprietor
What to do when you stop trading as yourself: SARS, staff, licences, the bank account, debts that stay yours, and records.
An AI checked the facts against the sources in the sources register, most recently on 13 October 2026. How this was made