Registration is an event. Compliance is a subscription. The difference is that the event has someone chasing it — you, because you want the certificate — and the subscription has nobody chasing it at all until something is already late.
Here is what a Botswana company actually owes, in the shape it actually arrives.
The annual return to CIPA
Every registered company files an annual return. It is the registry’s way of confirming that what it holds about your company — directors, shareholding, address — is still true.
The thing almost nobody knows: your filing month is specific to your company. It is recorded against your company on the CIPA register, and it is set when the company is registered rather than being a single date the whole country shares. Which means the correct first step is not "when is the deadline" but "what month is mine" — and the answer is on your own CIPA record.
If you do not know your annual return filing month, look at your CIPA extract before anything else on this page. Everything else is predictable; this one is specific to you.
Miss it and the charge is typically levied per outstanding year, which is why a company that has quietly not filed since 2023 is a much bigger bill than one that is a few months late. Arrears in this area do not sit still.
Your financial year end, which sets everything else
Your financial year end is worth choosing rather than defaulting into, because it is what determines when your annual return and your tax filings fall due each year. Pick one that does not land in your busiest trading month, and you have made every future year easier for the price of thinking about it once.
BURS: TIN, then only what applies
Every company needs a Taxpayer Identification Number. That is the baseline, and it is what a bank and most corporate customers will ask for. PulaGo handles BURS registration for P350, including obtaining your tax clearance certificate.
After that it depends on what you actually are:
- Company income tax — this is the one every company has, and it follows your financial year end.
- VAT returns — only once you are VAT-registered, which becomes compulsory above the turnover threshold BURS sets, currently P1,000,000. Once registered, returns are periodic and due whether or not you traded.
- PAYE — only once you have employees on a payroll. It is remitted monthly, and it is the one where being late is most visible, because it is money you have already withheld from someone else.
Most newly registered companies need neither VAT nor PAYE in year one, and paying to register for both at incorporation usually means paying for something you will not use for a year or more.
Thresholds, rates and filing frequencies are set by BURS and do change. Confirm your position with BURS, or ask us to check it against what your business actually does.
Licence renewal, from your council
Your trading or industrial licence is issued by the council where you operate, and it is renewed on their cycle at their fee — which is why a licence price quoted without asking where you are located is a guess. The renewal is the obligation most often forgotten, because unlike a tax filing there is no system quietly accruing a balance. It simply lapses, and then you are trading without one.
Why the calendar beats the reminder
The pattern behind every late filing we see is the same: the obligation was known, and it was not scheduled. Nobody forgets what a VAT return is. They forget that this month is one.
- Write down your CIPA annual return filing month, from your own CIPA record.
- Write down your financial year end, and what it makes due and when.
- Add your licence expiry date, with a reminder a month before — renewal is not instant.
- If you are VAT-registered or running a payroll, put those on the same calendar, monthly, as recurring entries rather than as tasks you will remember.
- Decide now who is responsible for each one. "The company" is not an answer; a name is.
This is also the reason a company secretary who answers the phone is worth more than one who is cheap — the filings are their job, and an unreachable secretary is how a compliant company becomes a non-compliant one without doing anything.
If you are already behind
Behind is recoverable, and it is the most common state we take companies over in. Establish what is actually outstanding from the CIPA record rather than from memory, get the filings brought up to date in order, and put the calendar in place before the next cycle starts. A company already on the register never needs re-registering — it needs its compliance taken over.
PulaGo is a private company and is not affiliated with or endorsed by CIPA, BURS or PPRA. Deadlines, fees and penalties are set by those authorities and can change; confirm yours with them.