Essa and Company, a division of Bhodla Nkomo Technologies (Pty) Ltd, collects and processes personal information in order to prepare and lodge statutory filings with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) and the South African Revenue Service (SARS) on behalf of our clients. This notice explains what we collect, why, and what you can ask us to do about it. It is issued in terms of the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA).
Who is responsible for your information
Bhodla Nkomo Technologies (Pty) Ltd, trading as Essa and Company, is the responsible party. We are based in Port Shepstone, KwaZulu-Natal. You can reach us at info@essaco.co.za about anything in this notice.
What we collect
To do the work you instruct us to do, we typically need: your full name, identity or passport number and a certified copy of that document; your contact details; your company or close corporation name and registration number; details of directors, members, shareholders and beneficial owners; your registered and physical addresses; your income tax, VAT and PAYE reference numbers; banking details where a filing or a supplier registration requires them; and financial records such as turnover figures, annual financial statements, IRP5 and IT3 certificates and expense records.
We collect this information directly from you in almost every case. Where a filing requires it, we also obtain information about your entity from the CIPC and SARS registers using the authority you give us.
Why we process it
We process your information for one reason: to carry out the filing or registration you have asked us to carry out, and to advise you on what is outstanding. That includes preparing and submitting returns, applications and declarations to CIPC and SARS, corresponding with them as your appointed representative, and keeping the records of that work that the law requires us to keep.
We rely on your instruction and on our legal obligations as the lawful basis for this processing. We do not use your information for marketing without your consent, and we do not sell it to anyone.
Who we share it with
Your information is disclosed to CIPC and SARS, because that is the point of the work. Where a filing requires it, it may also be disclosed to the National Treasury through the Central Supplier Database, or to a commissioner of oaths for an affidavit. We use reputable service providers for email, document storage and accounting software, and those providers process information on our instruction only. We do not disclose your information to anyone else unless you ask us to, or unless a law or a court order requires it.
How long we keep it
We keep client records for as long as we act for you, and after that for the periods required by the Companies Act, the Tax Administration Act and the Financial Intelligence Centre Act. In practice that means at least five years after the last filing we did for you. After that we delete or de-identify the records unless we are required to keep them for longer.
How we protect it
We take reasonable technical and organisational steps to protect your information, including access controls on the devices and accounts used for client work, encrypted transmission where we send documents, and restricting access to the people who need it to do the job. No system is perfect, and if a breach affecting your information occurs we will notify you and the Information Regulator as POPIA requires.
Your rights
You may ask us what information we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete information that is wrong or that we no longer need, object to processing, and withdraw a consent you have given. You can exercise any of these by emailing info@essaco.co.za. Some information we cannot delete on request, because CIPC, SARS or FICA obliges us to keep it. If we refuse a request we will tell you why.
If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your information, you may complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa at inforegulator.org.za.
This website
Our enquiry form collects your name, email address, phone number, the service you are asking about and whatever you write in the message. We use that only to answer you. The site uses cookies and analytics to understand how pages are used. You can block cookies in your browser without losing access to anything on the site.
Changes
We update this notice when our practices change. The version on this page is the current one.