Payroll

IRP5 and IT3(a) Certificates Explained

IRP5 and IT3(a) certificates summarise a year of pay and tax for each employee. Here's the difference, when you issue each, and how e@syFile generates them.

Updated 2026-07-30

Twice a year you reconcile your payroll with SARS. Once that's done, every employee needs a piece of paper (or a PDF) that tells them, and SARS, exactly what they earned and what came off it. That's an IRP5 or an IT3(a), and which one you issue depends on a single question: did you deduct tax from this person or not?

Two certificates, one purpose

Both the IRP5 and the IT3(a) are annual tax certificates. Each one summarises what an employee earned from you over a tax year and what was deducted along the way: PAYE, UIF, and any other statutory amounts. The certificate is the employee's proof of what happened to their pay, and it's SARS's cross-check against what you declared.

The difference between them comes down to whether tax was withheld. You issue an IRP5 when you withheld PAYE from the employee during the year, which covers most people earning above the tax threshold. You issue an IT3(a) when no PAYE was deducted, most often because the employee earned below the threshold for the year; it still records their earnings and any non-tax deductions, just with a zero or near-zero PAYE line.

The same employee can technically move between the two if their earnings crossed the threshold partway through the year. In practice you don't have to work that out, because e@syFile's logic decides it from what you declared.

Where they come from

You don't type these out one by one. They're generated inside SARS e@syFile as part of your EMP501 reconciliation, the twice-yearly process where you confirm that what you declared on your EMP201s each month matches what you actually paid people. Submit and get that reconciliation accepted, and the certificates for every employee on your payroll are ready to issue.

Your employees then use theirs to complete their own personal income tax return, the ITR12. In most cases the numbers from your certificate are pre-populated on their eFiling profile once you've submitted your reconciliation, so filing season is less "find your paperwork" and more "check the numbers and confirm."

Timing matters more than people think

Issue certificates late and you don't just annoy your team. You put them in the position of filing a tax return with incomplete or missing data at exactly the time SARS expects everyone to file, which is the one time of year they can least afford to be waiting on you.

The certificates should go out shortly after each EMP501 reconciliation closes, so employees have them well before tax season opens rather than during it.

E·BIZI Pay keeps your reconciliation data clean all year, so when EMP501 season comes around, generating IRP5s and IT3(a)s is a formality, not a scramble.

Common questions

What's the actual difference between an IRP5 and an IT3(a)?

Both summarise a year of earnings for one employee. An IRP5 is issued when you deducted PAYE from them during the year. An IT3(a) is issued when you didn't, usually because they earned below the tax threshold.

Do I need to issue one for an employee who only worked a few months?

Yes. The certificate covers whatever period they were on your payroll within the tax year, not a full twelve months. Someone who joined in November still gets a certificate reflecting November to February.

Where do these certificates come from?

SARS e@syFile generates them as part of your EMP501 reconciliation. You don't design or type them out yourself. Once your reconciliation is submitted and accepted, the certificates are ready to issue.

Do employees have to do anything with the numbers themselves?

Not much. The figures normally flow through to their ITR12 on eFiling already filled in. They should still check that what's pre-populated matches what they actually earned before they submit.