Quarterly Payment Dates (QPDs) in Zimbabwe: How to Calculate and Pay Provisional Tax (2026)

Your company's tax bill is due four times a year, not once

One of the most expensive misunderstandings in Zimbabwean business is the belief that company tax is something you deal with after year-end, when the accountant finally closes the books. It is not. Under section 72 of the Income Tax Act, companies and other self-assessment taxpayers pay their income tax during the year, in four instalments, on dates known as Quarterly Payment Dates or QPDs.

By the time you sit down to file the annual return for the year that has just ended, ZIMRA expects to have already received all of that year's tax. The annual return is a reconciliation, not an invoice.

This guide covers the mechanics: the dates, the percentages, how to work out each instalment, what happens when your estimate changes mid-year, and the deemed amounts ZIMRA applies to traders who never registered at all. It is a companion to our broader guide to business taxes in Zimbabwe, which sets out VAT, PAYE and IMTT alongside company tax.

The four dates

For a company with a normal 31 December year-end, ZIMRA's published payment dates are:

The percentages are cumulative in effect: by 25 March you should have paid 10% of the year's tax, by 25 June a total of 35%, by 25 September a total of 65%, and by 20 December the whole 100%.

If the Commissioner has approved a different accounting year for your business, your dates shift accordingly. Approval is not automatic and it is not something you can assume.

A wrinkle worth knowing about

ZIMRA's own Public Notice 17 of 2026, issued on 6 March 2026, contains two sets of dates that do not agree. Paragraph 1 states plainly that the first quarter provisional tax return is due on or before 20 March 2026 and the payment on or before 25 March 2026. But the table in paragraph 4 of the same notice lists 20 March, 20 June, 20 September and 15 December under a column headed "Day Tax is Due".

ZIMRA's standing Tax Payment Dates page uses 25 March, 25 June, 25 September and 20 December, and that matches paragraph 1 of the notice. The most sensible reading is that the earlier dates are the return submission dates and the later ones are the payment dates.

The safe way to handle a conflict like this is not to argue it after the fact. File the return and pay by the earlier of the two dates in any quarter and the question never arises. If you are cutting it fine, ring ZIMRA's contact centre and get the position for your specific case before the deadline rather than after.

What you are actually paying

Company income tax in Zimbabwe is charged at 25%, and on top of the tax itself sits the AIDS levy of 3%. Crucially, the levy is 3% of the tax, not 3% of your income. That gives a combined effective rate of 25.75% on taxable profit, and it is the rate ZIMRA uses in its own published QPD worked example.

The same "levy on the tax, not the income" logic applies to employees' PAYE, which is why our income tax calculator adds the levy after computing the tax rather than before. If you are a director drawing a salary from your own company, that calculation and this one are two separate obligations running side by side.

Worked example: a company expecting US$120,000 of taxable profit

Suppose you run a small services company and, in March, your realistic estimate of taxable profit for the full year is US$120,000.

Estimated tax for the year: 120,000 x 25.75% = US$30,900.

Your four instalments:

• QPD1, 25 March. 10% of 30,900 = US$3,090.
• QPD2, 25 June. Cumulative 35% of 30,900 = 10,815. Less the 3,090 already paid = US$7,725.
• QPD3, 25 September. Cumulative 65% of 30,900 = 20,085. Less the 10,815 already paid = US$9,270.
• QPD4, 20 December. Cumulative 100% = 30,900. Less the 20,085 already paid = US$10,815.

The four payments add back to US$30,900 exactly. That is the arithmetic check to run every time: your cumulative payments after the fourth quarter must equal your estimated annual tax.

Each payment is accompanied by form ITF 12B, the provisional tax return. The annual reconciliation is a different form, the ITF 12C, filed after year-end with signed financial statements attached.

When your estimate changes: the mid-year revision

The estimate is not fixed in March. You are expected to revise it every quarter as the year unfolds, and the cumulative structure is designed to absorb the change.

Take the same company. By September, a large contract has landed and the realistic full-year profit is now US$160,000, not 120,000.

Revised estimated tax: 160,000 x 25.75% = US$41,200.

• Cumulative 65% due by 25 September = 41,200 x 65% = 26,780.
• Already paid across QPD1 and QPD2 = 3,090 + 7,725 = 10,815.
• QPD3 payment = 26,780 - 10,815 = US$15,965.
• QPD4 payment = 41,200 - 26,780 = US$14,420.

Total across the four: US$41,200. The catch-up lands in the quarter you revise, which is exactly why a business that has a very good third quarter needs to plan cash for a September payment far larger than the 30% headline suggests. If that catch-up is what strains you, deal with it as a working-capital question before the date, not as a tax question after it. Our business loans comparison is a starting point, though borrowing to pay tax is a last resort, not a plan.

The reverse also applies. If trading deteriorates and your revised annual tax falls below what you have already paid, you do not get a refund mid-year. The excess simply sits against later quarters.

Which currency you pay in

Zimbabwe's dual-currency reality reaches into provisional tax. Public Notice 17 of 2026 sets out two positions for the 2026 year of assessment:

• Taxpayers whose estimated total income is more than 50% in foreign currency must apply what ZIMRA calls the 50-50 basis, accounting for tax separately in foreign and local currency.
• Taxpayers whose estimated total income is 50% or less in foreign currency must account for tax in the currency of trade.

The practical consequence is that a business earning mostly US dollars cannot settle the whole liability in ZiG, and a business earning mostly ZiG should not be scrambling for US dollars at the deadline. The detailed mechanics of splitting a computation this way are genuinely technical and the notice does not spell them out line by line, so if a material part of your income sits on the wrong side of that 50% line, confirm the treatment with ZIMRA or a registered tax practitioner before you file. Getting the currency split wrong is a common source of assessed shortfalls.

For context on why the two currencies behave so differently in practice, see our explainer on ZiG and the US dollar and on nostro accounts.

If you never registered, ZIMRA has already set your number

This is the part of the 2026 notice that catches people out. Paragraph 3 provides that where a person carrying on trade or business has not registered with ZIMRA, and has not applied to register, by the date a QPD falls due, that person is required to pay a deemed quarterly provisional tax at fixed amounts:

Read those figures carefully. They are per quarter, not per year, and they are not linked to your actual profit. A small hardware shop that never registered is looking at a deemed US$15,000 a quarter, US$60,000 a year, regardless of what it actually earned.

Anyone who has registered, or has applied to register, by the date the QPD is due pays in the normal way described above, on their own estimate. The entire penalty of this regime is avoided by registering. If you are trading without a formal structure, our guide to registering a company in Zimbabwe covers the first step, and the side business money guide covers the point at which an informal hustle stops being informal.

Who does QPDs, and who does not

An employee whose only income is a salary already taxed under the Final Deduction System does not file QPDs. Their PAYE is the final tax. But ZIMRA's notice is explicit that taxpayers with other income outside the FDS must make QPD payments and submit returns. Rental income, consulting fees, a trading sideline: those push an ordinary salaried person into the provisional tax net.

From 1 January 2026, several groups that previously sat under presumptive tax migrated to self-assessment and must now submit returns and remit QPDs. These include larger omnibus operators, goods vehicle operators above the stated tonnages, operators of commercial waterborne vessels, and registered professionals: architects, engineers and technicians, legal practitioners, health practitioners and estate agents. For the wider picture of how Zimbabwe's tax system fits together, see our Zimbabwe tax guide.

What it costs to get this wrong

Two separate consequences follow from mishandling QPDs.

The first is interest on underpayment. If your estimates were too low and the annual reconciliation shows you paid less than you should have during the year, the Act provides for interest on the shortfall, on the logic that the state was deprived of revenue it should have had earlier. Whether and when that interest can be waived has been litigated in Zimbabwe and the position is not something to rely on second-hand: if you are facing an underestimation charge, get the current position from ZIMRA or a practitioner. We are not publishing an interest rate here because we could not verify one against a primary source, and a wrong number would cost you more than no number.

The second is civil penalties for late returns, which accrue daily and are applied automatically by ZIMRA's system once a due date passes. These are mechanical. Nobody reviews them for fairness before they are raised.

There is also a knock-on effect that hurts immediately: a company that is behind on QPDs will struggle to hold a valid tax clearance certificate, and without one, clients are obliged to withhold a slice of every payment they make to you. The compliance problem becomes a cash flow problem within one invoice cycle.

A quarter-by-quarter checklist

1. Early in each quarter, update your estimate of full-year taxable profit using actual results to date, not January's optimism.
2. Multiply by 25.75% to get estimated annual tax.
3. Apply the cumulative percentage for the quarter (10%, 35%, 65%, 100%) and subtract everything you have already paid.
4. File the ITF 12B through ZIMRA's self-service portal by the return date.
5. Pay by the payment date, in the correct currency or currency split.
6. Keep the proof of payment filed with the quarter's management accounts, so the year-end reconciliation takes an hour rather than a week.
7. Diarise the next date the same day you pay. The gap between quarters is long enough to forget.

If IMTT and VAT are also part of your monthly rhythm, our IMTT calculator and VAT calculator handle those separately.

Frequently asked questions

Do I still pay QPDs if my company made a loss? If your genuine estimate of taxable profit for the year is nil, the estimated tax is nil and the instalment is nil. But you should still submit the return showing that estimate. A missing return attracts penalties even when nothing is owed, and a nil filing is your record that you did the exercise.

Is 25.75% the rate for every company? It is the standard company rate for 2026, made up of 25% tax plus the 3% AIDS levy charged on that tax. Certain sectors and special regimes are taxed differently, and a company operating under a designated special arrangement may not be on the standard rate. Confirm your own rate with ZIMRA before building it into a forecast.

What is the difference between the ITF 12B and the ITF 12C? The ITF 12B is the quarterly provisional return that accompanies each QPD payment. The ITF 12C is the annual self-assessment return filed after year-end, supported by signed financial statements. The 12B is an estimate; the 12C is the reconciliation.

I am a sole trader, not a company. Does this apply to me? If you are carrying on a trade or business and your income is not fully taxed under the Final Deduction System, yes. The deemed provisional tax table in the 2026 notice is aimed squarely at unregistered individual traders, not only at companies.

Can I pay the whole year's tax in March and be done with it? Nothing stops you paying ahead. Paying more than the cumulative percentage required at a given quarter is not a compliance problem. It is a cash flow decision, and for most businesses tying up a full year's tax in the first quarter is the wrong one.

Where does capital gains tax fit into all this? It does not, and we deliberately publish no capital gains tax rate anywhere on this site. We found unreconciled conflicts between sources on the current figure and would rather say so than print a number you might rely on. For a capital gains question, go to ZIMRA directly or to a registered tax practitioner.

The bottom line

QPDs turn company tax from an annual shock into four manageable, forecastable payments, but only if you treat the estimate as a live number that you revise every quarter. The businesses that get hurt are the ones that set an estimate in March, ignore it until December, and then discover that the fourth quarter carries a catch-up they cannot fund.

Register, estimate honestly, revise quarterly, file the ITF 12B, and pay by the earlier of the two dates ZIMRA's own paperwork gives you.

Last reviewed: September 2026. General information, not financial, tax or legal advice. Figures are from ZIMRA's published Tax Payment Dates page and Public Notice 17 of 2026; confirm your own position with ZIMRA or a registered tax practitioner before acting.