This lesson is the procedural heart of the employer's PAYE obligation as it is operated inside ZIMRA's Self-Service Portal (SSP): the Employee Management module. Every figure that later appears on the monthly P2 remittance return is manufactured here first — the P2 is merely a total of what the Employee Management pages already hold. Master this module and the P2 fills itself; neglect it and every downstream number is wrong.

The module has three pages: Employees (register and maintain each worker's record regardless of status — active, inactive, former, temporary, contractor — and initiate generation of their incomes), Earnings (set the calculation method, upload or capture the period's income data, and generate the employees' tax for each worker), and Assessment of Employee Earnings (review the system's computed earnings and tax before the P2 is submitted). The Employees and Earnings pages feed the P2 directly; the P2 totals are derived from the per-employee earnings recorded here. (The SSP online help was unreachable for this lesson — an empty JavaScript shell at default.htm — so screen-level specifics are grounded in the local ZIMRA SSP External Guide and flagged ` where the guide is thin.)

The governing law is the Thirteenth Schedule to the Income Tax Act [Chapter 23:06] (made under Sections 71, 72 and 73), the "Employees' Tax" schedule — what practitioners call PAYE. Its load-bearing paragraphs are: paragraph 1 (the definitions of employee, employer, remuneration, employees' tax and employees' tax certificate); paragraph 2 (an employer must register within 14 days of becoming an employer, and notify ZIMRA within 14 days of an address change or cessation); paragraph 3 (the duty to withhold per the prescribed tax-deduction tables and remit by the 10th day of the following month, with foreign-currency remuneration computed and paid separately under para 3(1b)); paragraph 4 (keep a per-employee record and furnish annual returns within 30 days of year-end); paragraph 14 (deliver an employees' tax certificate — the ITF 16 — to each employee and a copy to ZIMRA); and paragraphs 10–11 (personal liability for tax not withheld plus a further equal amount, remissible only where there was no intent to evade).

Three rules from paragraph 1 do most of the analytical work. First, an "employee" is an individual paid remuneration at an annual rate above the tax-free threshold in Section 14(2)(a)(i) of the Finance Act [Chapter 23:04] — for 2025, ZiG 33,600 / USD 1,200 per year (confirmed in the prior PAYE lessons). Second, "remuneration" expressly excludes amounts paid to a person acting in an independent trade (para 1(a)) — so a contractor is not an employee, does not belong in a P2, and is instead exposed to the 30% Section 80 withholding on a REV 5 where no valid tax clearance exists. Third, foreign-currency and local-currency pay are kept on separate rails: under Section 37AA and para 3(1b), USD payroll generates a USD P2 and ZiG payroll a ZiG P2, never netted.

The economic stakes are personal and immediate. Under paragraph 10, an employer who fails to withhold or to remit is personally liable for the tax and a further amount equal to it (a 100% penalty), recoverable as a debt due to the State; the tax (but not the penalty) may be recovered from the employee under paragraph 12; and remission under paragraph 11 is available only where the Commissioner is satisfied there was no intent to evade — the principle settled in The Endeavour Foundation and UDC Ltd v COT (95-SC-095). Add Section 71/SI 212 of 2022 interest, the 3% AIDS Levy on the tax (National AIDS Council Act [Chapter 15:14] read with the Finance Act), and the fact that a single PAYE default disables tax clearance across every head (Section 80A/ITF 263), and the discipline of keeping the Employee Management module clean each month is one of the highest-leverage routines in the whole TaRMS course. This lesson builds directly on tarmspayereturn and tarmspayeworkflow (which established the P2 and its rate tables verbatim) and feeds the monthly-routine and pitfalls capstones.

Almost everyone who meets PAYE for the first time meets it as the P2 return — the one-page monthly remittance an employer files and pays by the 10th. That is the visible end of the process. But the P2 is a summary document: its five lines are arithmetic totals. The place where the underlying facts are recorded — who your people are, what each was paid this month, what tax each attracts, and whether any of them is in fact a contractor who should never have been on the payroll — is the Employee Management module of the SSP. As the ZIMRA SSP External Guide puts it, "The Employees and Earnings pages feed directly into the monthly P2 PAYE remittance return … The P2 totals are derived from the per-employee earnings recorded here."

That single sentence reorders the whole employer workflow. In the legacy world (paper schedules, spreadsheets, the retired e-services platform), the employer computed PAYE off-system and typed a total onto a return. In TaRMS, the system itself holds the employee register and computes the per-person tax; the return is generated from that register. The implication is that data hygiene in Employee Management is now the control point. If an employee is misclassified, paid in the wrong currency stream, has stale registration details, or is omitted entirely, the error is built into the P2 before you ever open the Tax Return Management module.

This module sits at position 8 in the SSP's sixteen-module map (introduced in tarmsintroduction): after Taxpayer Registration, Taxpayer Information, Assignee Management and Certificates, and immediately before Tax Return Management (where the P2 is filed) and Taxpayer Accounting (where the resulting liability appears). The ordering is not accidental — it mirrors the real-life sequence: first know your workforce, then declare what you withheld from them.

Why does this matter so much in Zimbabwe specifically? Three reasons. First, PAYE is the State's single most reliable revenue stream because it is collected at source by thousands of employers acting, in effect, as unpaid tax agents for ZIMRA — and the law makes them personally liable when they get it wrong (paragraph 10). Second, the dual-currency economy means almost every Zimbabwean employer of any size runs two payrolls — USD and ZiG — that must be kept rigorously apart (Section 37AA). The Employee Management module is where that separation is either respected or quietly violated. Third, ZIMRA audit interest in payroll is high precisely because the common errors — disguising employees as "contractors", under-stating taxable benefits, dropping low-paid staff off the register, netting the two currencies — are both frequent and lucrative to assess. An auditor who reconstructs your true workforce from bank records and finds it does not match your Employee Management register has an immediate, quantifiable assessment.

For the beginner, the orientation is this: the P2 is the report; Employee Management is the source. Everything in this lesson is about keeping the source clean so the report is correct, on time, and in the right currency.

PAYE is not a free-standing Act. It is the Thirteenth Schedule to the Income Tax Act [Chapter 23:06], expressly made under Sections 71, 72 and 73 and headed "Employees' Tax". Section 73 ("Payment of employees' tax") is the charging hook: "Employees' tax shall be payable in terms of the Thirteenth Schedule in respect of the remuneration liable to employees' tax … paid or payable." Everything the Employee Management module does is an electronic expression of the duties this Schedule places on the employer. We walk it paragraph by paragraph, because each paragraph maps onto something you do — or must avoid — inside the module.

Paragraph 1 — the definitions that decide who goes in the register

"Employee" means "an individual to whom remuneration is paid or payable at an annual rate that is more than the amount specified in subparagraph (i) of paragraph (a) of subsection (2) of Section 14 of the Finance Act [Chapter 23:04] in respect of the year of assessment concerned." Read that carefully: the definition is pegged to the tax-free threshold. For the 2025 year of assessment that threshold is ZiG 33,600 / USD 1,200 per annum (i.e. ZiG 2,800 / USD 100 per month), confirmed from the Finance Act and the 2025 tax tables in the prior PAYE lessons. A worker paid at or below that rate is, strictly, not an "employee" for the Schedule's withholding purpose — there is no tax to withhold — even though, as we will see, the SSP still expects them in the Employees register.

"Employees' tax" means "any amount required to be withheld by an employer in terms of paragraph 3" — i.e. PAYE itself. "Employees' tax certificate" means "a certificate required to be issued by an employer in terms of paragraph 14" — this is the ITF 16 (historically the "P.6"), the year-end certificate the module generates.

"Employer" is defined broadly: "any person … who pays or is liable to pay to any employee any amount by way of remuneration", expressly including persons acting in a fiduciary capacity (trustees of insolvent or deceased estates, administrators of pension/provident/benefit funds) and including a representative of the employer. A "non-resident employer" (an individual not ordinarily resident, or a company/partnership without its head office or principal place of business in Zimbabwe) is caught too — and paragraph 2(4)–(6) forces it to appoint a resident representative to register and act as its agent.

"Remuneration" is the engine of the whole Schedule and the source of the most expensive classification errors. It means "any amount of income … paid or payable … by way of any salary, leave pay, allowance, wage, overtime pay, bonus, gratuity, commission, fee, emolument, pension … whether in cash or otherwise and whether or not in respect of services rendered", including the gross-income paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (f) of Section 8(1) (which sweep in taxable benefits). It then excludes, among others: - (a) amounts paid to a person for services rendered in the course of a trade conducted independently of the payer — the contractor carve-out (with a proviso that insurance and estate-agency commissions are nonetheless remuneration); - (b) and (j) non-executive directors' fees (now taxed under the Thirty-Third Schedule withholding, FA 7/2021 w.e.f. 1 Jan 2022); - (d) amounts exempt under the Third Schedule; - (e) partnership drawings paid to a partner; - (f) reimbursements of expenditure actually incurred in employment; - (k) anything the Commissioner-General directs is not remuneration.

Finally, "remuneration liable to employees' tax" is the remuneration that remains after deducting Sixth-Schedule ordinary pension contributions (excluding benefit-fund contributions) — the base on which the deduction tables actually operate.

The practical upshot for the module: the Employees page is where you decide, person by person, whether someone is even within these definitions. Misclassify a genuine employee as a "contractor" to dodge PAYE and you have not avoided tax — you have created an under-withholding that paragraph 10 makes your personal liability.

Paragraph 2 — registration of employers (the 14-day clock)

"Every person who becomes an employer shall apply to the Commissioner … for registration as an employer, within 14 days of his becoming an employer" (para 2(1)). Para 2(2) adds a second 14-day duty: notify ZIMRA within 14 days of changing address or ceasing to be an employer. Para 2A requires a principal to register in lieu of any subordinate person (subsidiary, branch, controlled entity). In TaRMS terms, employer registration is part of Taxpayer Registration (adding the PAYE/employees'-tax revenue head to the taxpayer profile); only once the head is active does the Employee Management module become live for that taxpayer.

Paragraph 3 — the duty to withhold and the 10th-day deadline

Para 3(1) is the operative command: "Every employer (whether or not he has registered … in terms of … paragraph 2) who pays or becomes liable to pay any amount by way of remuneration … shall … withhold … an amount … determined in accordance with such tax deduction tables as may be prescribed … and shall pay the amount so withheld to the Commissioner on the 10th day of the month following … or within such longer period not exceeding 7 days as the Commissioner may for good cause allow … or, in the case of a person who ceases to be an employer before the end of such month, on the following day after the day on which he or she ceases to be an employer."

Three things to lock in. (i) The duty bites whether or not you registered — non-registration is no escape. (ii) The deadline is the 10th — distinct from VAT'Section 15th; conflating the two is a named pitfall (see tarmspitfalls). (iii) Para 3(1b) requires foreign-currency remuneration to be "determined … separately from the other remuneration" and the appropriate amounts paid within the same period — the statutory root of the two-P2, two-currency rule and of Section 37AA. This is precisely what the Earnings page operationalises by computing each employee's tax against the USD table or the ZiG table as appropriate.

Paragraph 4 — records and annual returns (the ITF 16 reconciliation)

Para 4(1): "Every employer shall, in respect of each employee, maintain a record showing the amounts of remuneration paid … and the amount of employees' tax withheld …" — retained and available for scrutiny. Para 4(2): furnish annual returns showing each employee's name and address, total remuneration, and total tax withheld, plus a copy of each employees' tax certificate delivered under paragraph 14. Para 4(3): submit within 30 days after the end of the year of assessment (on cessation, within 14 days). This is the statutory basis of the year-end reconciliation: the twelve monthly P2s must agree, in aggregate, with the sum of the ITF 16 certificates the module generates.

Paragraphs 5–9 — accrual, protection, anti-avoidance, deceased estates

Para 5 deems withheld tax to have accrued to the employee on the date withheld. Para 6 protects an employer who withholds in good faith from any action by the employee. Para 7 makes void any agreement that an employer will not withhold. Para 8 makes paragraph 3 operate in derogation of any other law, instrument or agreement governing deductions from pay — so PAYE comes off before any garnishee or attachment, which only ever bites the net. Para 9 requires the employer to seek a directive before paying remuneration to a deceased employee's estate.

Paragraphs 10–13 — the consequences of getting it wrong

This is where the personal stakes live. Para 10(1): an employer who fails to withhold or to remit is personally liable for "(a) the amount of employees' tax which he failed to withhold or to pay" and "(b) a further amount equal to such employees' tax" — i.e. a 100% penalty. Para 10(2): these are debts due to the State, suable in any competent court. Para 10(3): the Commissioner may estimate the under-withheld tax, with Section 45 applying. Para 10(4)'s additional penalty was repealed by the Finance Act 1 of 2018. Para 11: the Commissioner may remit the further amount (the 10(1)(b) penalty) where satisfied the failure "was not due to an intent to evade". Para 12: the employer may recover the tax (but not the para 10(1)(b) further amount) from the employee. Para 13: insolvency priority.

Paragraphs 14–15 — the employees' tax certificate (ITF 16)

Para 14(1)–(3): every employer who withholds must deliver to each employee an employees' tax certificate showing total remuneration and total tax withheld, within 30 days after the end of the period to which it relates (on cessation in relation to that employee, within 14 days), and furnish a copy to the Commissioner within 30 days of year-end (14 days on cessation). Para 15(9) requires retention of certificates and copies, with a 6-year destruction proviso. In the SSP, this is the Year-end → ITF 16 generation function noted in the SSP guide ("generate ITF 16 employee tax certificates from Employee Management; reconcile sum of P2s for the year against sum of ITF 16s").

Paragraphs 16–20A — the employee's side and the Final Deduction System

Para 16: every individual must give the employer a tax code declaration within 7 days of becoming an employee (and a fresh one within 7 days of any change). Para 17: the employee forwards the certificate with any assessment return. Para 18: PAYE is credited against the employee's final income-tax liability, with excess of US$0.05 or more refunded (FA 13/2023) and a joint-and-several liability where a certificate over-states tax not actually withheld. Para 19: refunds only via para 18. Para 20: the Commissioner's directives. Para 20A: the Final Deduction System (FDS) — the Commissioner may direct withholding so that the tax withheld over the year is "as nearly as possible the same as the income tax payable". The FDS is the reason most Zimbabwean employees do not file an ITF 1 at all — their PAYE is their final tax (paragraph 20A also underpins the Section 37A(8)/para 20A filing exemption referenced in tarmsassessments). The Employee Management module, by computing each person's tax to the table month by month, is the FDS in software.

C.1 The "Employees" page — building and maintaining the register

The Employees page does three jobs (SSP guide §8): you "register the organisation's employees; manage their registration details regardless of status (active, inactive, former, temporary, contractor); initiate generation of all employee incomes for further submission of PAYE tax reports."

Registering an employee. For each worker you capture the identifying and tax data the system needs to compute and report PAYE. At minimum this is the worker's identity (name, national ID or passport for a foreign national), their TIN if they have one, engagement date, employment status, the currency in which they are paid, and the pay particulars that drive the deduction tables. (The SSP guide lists only the module's purpose, not the field-by-field form. `)

Status management — and why you keep everyone. The guide is explicit that you manage details "regardless of status (active, inactive, former, temporary, contractor)." The teaching point is subtle: the register is the whole workforce, but the tax treatment differs by who they are: - Active employees above the threshold → full PAYE, into the relevant currency P2. - Low-paid employees at/below the Section 14(2)(a)(i) threshold → recorded, but no tax to withhold (they fall outside the para 1 "employee" definition for withholding); keeping them on the register is what lets the year-end reconciliation and any later threshold-crossing work correctly. - Former/inactive employees → retained on the register so their part-year earnings and their ITF 16 are captured; never simply deleted mid-year. - Temporary/casual → still employees if paid above the threshold; para 14(5) lets the Commissioner treat a casual employer as not having "ceased" in relation to re-employable casuals. - Contractors → the dangerous category. A genuine independent contractor is carved out of "remuneration" by para 1(a) and does not generate PAYE. Their fees are instead within Section 80 (the 30% withholding on a REV 5 where there is no valid ITF 263). Listing a true contractor in the module is for record completeness — their income must not be pushed into the P2. Conversely, calling a real employee a "contractor" to avoid PAYE is the classic mis-classification that paragraph 10 turns into your personal liability.

"Initiate generation of all employee incomes" is the bridge to the next page: once the register is current, you trigger the system to create, for the period, an income record for each employee that the Earnings page will then value.

C.2 The "Earnings" page — valuing the period and computing the tax

The Earnings page lets you "change the calculation methods used for employee incomes; upload employee-income data; generate earnings for each employee" (SSP guide §8).

Calculation method. PAYE in Zimbabwe is computed on the prescribed tax-deduction tables (para 3(1)), and the tables differ by currency and by pay period (monthly, weekly, etc.). Setting the calculation method tells the system which table and periodicity to apply. (Exact method options and labels: `)

Capturing the income. For each employee and each period you record the components of remuneration — cash salary/wages, overtime, allowances, commissions, and taxable benefits (motoring, housing, school-fees, low-interest loans, etc., valued under the Schedule's benefit rules). You may upload income data in bulk (useful for a large payroll) or capture it employee-by-employee. Sixth-Schedule ordinary pension contributions are stripped out to reach "remuneration liable to employees' tax" before the table is applied.

Generating the tax. The system then computes each employee's PAYE against the correct table, and the AIDS Levy at 3% of the tax (not of remuneration — the single most-mis-computed figure, see tarmspitfalls). Crucially, it does this per currency: USD-paid staff are valued on the USD table and roll into the USD P2; ZiG-paid staff on the ZiG table into the ZiG P2 — the para 3(1b)/Section 37AA separation, enforced in software.

The confirmed 2025 monthly table reference points (from the Form P2 External Guide via tarmspayereturn/tarmspayeworkflow) are: USD 1,800 → tax 455 (band 30%, deduct 85); USD 800 → tax 165; ZiG 18,000 → tax 3,520 (band 25%, deduct 980); ZiG 5,000 → tax 440. Tax-free threshold USD 1,200 / ZiG 33,600 per annum (FA Section 14(2)(a)). The bands themselves were substituted by Finance (No.2) Act 7 of 2024 for 2025.

C.3 The "Assessment of Employee Earnings" page — the pre-submission review

This page lets you "review the system's calculated earnings before submitting the P2" (SSP guide §8). It is the control gate: a per-employee statement of computed remuneration, PAYE and AIDS Levy that you check before the totals harden into a return. Use it to catch the predictable problems — a benefit omitted, a contractor wrongly swept in, an employee in the wrong currency stream, a stale tax code — while they are still cheap to fix. Only once this review is clean do you proceed to Tax Return Management → Pending Tax Returns, open the P2 for the period, and submit (the P2 filing flow itself is the subject of tarmspayereturn).

C.4 The end-to-end data flow

The module is one directional pipeline: Employees (who) → Earnings (how much, what tax, which currency) → Assessment of Employee Earnings (review) → P2 (declare and pay by the 10th) → year-end ITF 16 + reconciliation (para 4/para 14). Each arrow is a statutory duty, and each is a place an error can enter. The discipline the lesson teaches is to treat the first three boxes as the real work and the P2 as a printout.

D.1 The individual / sole-trader employer — a domestic and a gardener

Scenario. Mrs Chari, a sole trader, employs a domestic worker (ZiG 4,000/month) and a part-time gardener (ZiG 2,500/month), both paid in ZiG. She became an employer when she first paid them.

Treatment. Para 2(1) obliges her to register as an employer within 14 days. Both workers go on the Employees register. But note the threshold: the 2025 monthly tax-free figure is ZiG 2,800. The gardener at ZiG 2,500 is below it — recorded, but no PAYE. The domestic at ZiG 4,000 is above it, so PAYE is computed on the ZiG table. If, mid-year, the gardener's pay rises above ZiG 2,800, the register already holds him and the Earnings page simply begins generating tax. Mrs Chari files a ZiG P2 by the 10th and, at year-end, issues each an ITF 16 and reconciles. The lesson for the smallest employer: you are inside the Thirteenth Schedule the moment you pay a wage above the threshold — informality is not an exemption.

D.2 The SME — a Harare hardware shop with a mixed-currency payroll

Scenario. Mbare Hardware (Pvt) Ltd has 8 staff: 3 paid in USD (a manager on USD 1,800 and two sales staff on USD 800 each) and 5 paid in ZiG (two supervisors on ZiG 18,000, three assistants on ZiG 5,000). It also pays a self-employed bookkeeper USD 600/month who works for several clients.

Treatment in the module. - Register all 8 staff on the Employees page in their correct currency streams. The bookkeeper is a contractor (para 1(a) carve-out): if listed at all, not pushed into the P2 — instead, because the contracts are commercial, ZIMRA's Section 80 30% withholding on a REV 5 applies absent a valid ITF 263. - Earnings page, USD stream: manager USD 1,800 → 455; two sales USD 800 → 165 each. USD PAYE = 455 + 165 + 165 = USD 785; AIDS Levy 3% = USD 23.55; USD P2 total = USD 808.55. - Earnings page, ZiG stream: two supervisors ZiG 18,000 → 3,520 each; three assistants ZiG 5,000 → 440 each. ZiG PAYE = 7,040 + 1,320 = ZiG 8,360; AIDS Levy 3% = ZiG 250.80; ZiG P2 total = ZiG 8,610.80. - Two P2s, two payments, both by the 10th, never netted (para 3(1b)/Section 37AA).

The SME lesson: the currency split is not a formality — a single ZiG P2 lumping the USD staff in would be wrong on its face, expose the company to a Section 38-style currency mismatch logic (mirrored for PAYE by Section 37AA), and break the year-end reconciliation.

D.3 The large corporate / multinational — benefits, FDS and a non-resident parent

Scenario. A manufacturer with 600 employees, a bulk payroll system, generous taxable benefits (company cars, housing, staff loans), and a non-resident parent that pays three seconded expatriates.

Treatment. At scale, the Earnings upload is essential — per-employee capture of 600 records by hand is impractical, so the payroll system's output is uploaded and the module computes tax against the tables. Taxable benefits must be valued and included in remuneration (omitting them is the audit flag of choice). The employer is almost certainly under a paragraph 20A Final Deduction System directive, so the monthly withholding is engineered to land close to each employee's annual liability — which is why those 600 employees generally do not file ITF 1s. For the seconded expatriates paid by the non-resident parent, para 2(4)–(6) requires a resident representative to register and operate PAYE on the parent's behalf; the expatriates still go on the Zimbabwean entity's Employee Management register. The corporate's compliance differences are about volume, benefit valuation, and FDS calibration, not about a different legal rule.

PAYE administration is overwhelmingly statute-driven, and there is no reported Zimbabwean case on the Employee Management screens themselves — say so honestly rather than padding. The genuinely load-bearing authority is on the personal-liability/remission machinery:

• The Endeavour Foundation and UDC Ltd v COT (95-SC-095) — annotated to paragraph 10 in the Act itself. It is the anchor for the paragraph 11 remission discretion: the further amount (the 100% penalty) for failing to withhold or remit is remissible only where the failure was not due to an intent to evade. An employer who under-withholds through genuine error, comes forward, and corrects it stands in a very different position from one who concealed — the case is the doctrinal hinge between the two.

Two further, contextual authorities already in the course remain relevant by analogy. PIL v ZIMRA (17-HH-213) (records and computer evidence) supports the practical point that the Employee Management register and Earnings data are the records ZIMRA may scrutinise under para 4(1) — and that an auditor reads them, not your spreadsheets, as the primary source. On the employee-vs-contractor line, Zimbabwe applies the common-law "contract of service vs contract for services" tests; where no on-point local PAYE case is in the source folder, the South African and English authority on that distinction is persuasive only, not binding (`). The honest position to teach is that mis-classification is policed mainly through Section 44 audit powers and the paragraph 10 liability, not through a rich domestic case law.

1. Treating the P2 as the source instead of the report. Computing PAYE off-system and typing a total ignores that TaRMS derives the P2 from the Employee Management pages. Capture in the module first; let the P2 total itself.
2. Mis-classifying employees as "contractors." The para 1(a) carve-out is for genuinely independent trades. Dressing an employee as a contractor does not avoid tax — it converts an under-withholding into the employer's personal liability plus 100% under paragraph 10. Conversely, pushing a true contractor's fee into the P2 over-states PAYE and mishandles the Section 80 / REV 5 30% withholding that actually applies.
3. Omitting taxable benefits from Earnings. Cars, housing, school fees and cheap loans are remuneration (para 1, via Section 8(1)(b)/(c)/(f)). Leaving them out under-withholds; the employer, not the employee, bears the shortfall (para 10) and cannot recover the 10(1)(b) penalty from staff (para 12(4)).
4. Computing the AIDS Levy on remuneration instead of on the tax. The Levy is 3% of the PAYE, not 3% of pay. On the Earnings page the base is the tax. (See the worked figures in D.2.)
5. Netting or mixing the two currency streams. Para 3(1b)/Section 37AA require USD and ZiG to be determined and paid separately — two P2s, two payments. The Earnings page must value each employee in their pay currency.
6. Deleting leavers mid-year. Former and inactive employees must stay on the register so their part-year earnings and ITF 16 are captured and the year-end reconciliation (para 4) balances. Manage status; do not delete.
7. Dropping below-threshold staff off the register entirely. They carry no tax now, but they belong on the register so a mid-year raise above the threshold is captured and the workforce reconciles to the auditor's reconstruction.
8. Missing the 14-day registration / change-of-status notices. Para 2(1) (register within 14 days of becoming an employer) and para 2(2) (notify address change/cessation within 14 days) are easy to overlook for a new or closing business.
9. Confusing the 10th (PAYE) with the 15th (VAT). Different taxes, different deadlines — pacing payroll to the VAT date files PAYE five days late every month (named pitfall in tarmspitfalls).
10. Skipping the "Assessment of Employee Earnings" review. It exists precisely to catch the above before submission. Submitting straight from Earnings forfeits the cheapest correction point.
11. Ignoring the tax-code declaration (para 16). Without a current declaration the employer must withhold on the prescribed tables (para 3(3)); a stale declaration produces wrong withholding that surfaces only at the employee's year-end.
12. Forgetting year-end ITF 16 + reconciliation (para 4/14). Twelve P2s must agree with the sum of ITF 16s; a mismatch is an audit invitation and may signal an omitted month, a netting error, or an unrecorded benefit.

Work through the questions one at a time. Choose an answer and it is graded immediately, with an explanation and the provision it comes from. Your progress is saved, so you can stop and resume.

• Employee Management is the source; the P2 is the report. The SSP derives the P2 totals from the per-employee Employees and Earnings data — clean the source and the return is correct by construction.
• Three pages, one pipeline: Employees (who, status, currency), Earnings (value, tax, AIDS Levy, currency), Assessment of Employee Earnings (review before submission).
• The Thirteenth Schedule to the Income Tax Act [Chapter 23:06] governs throughout: para 1 definitions (employee is pegged to the Section 14(2)(a)(i) threshold — USD 1,200 / ZiG 33,600 p.a. for 2025; contractors are carved out of "remuneration"); para 2 14-day registration; para 3 withhold to the tables and remit by the 10th, currencies separate (para 3(1b)/Section 37AA); para 4/14 records, annual returns and the ITF 16 within 30 days of year-end.
• Get it wrong and it is personal: para 10 — the employer is personally liable for tax not withheld plus a further equal amount; para 12(4) — the penalty cannot be passed to staff; para 11/Endeavour Foundation 95-SC-095 — remission only where there was no intent to evade.
• The AIDS Levy is 3% of the tax, not of pay, and the two currency streams never net — the two most expensive Earnings-page errors.
• Keep everyone on the register (leavers, casuals, below-threshold staff) so part-year earnings, ITF 16s and the year-end reconciliation (twelve P2s = sum of ITF 16s) balance.
• The Final Deduction System (para 20A) is why most employees never file an ITF 1 — the module, by computing each person's tax monthly, makes PAYE their final tax.
• A PAYE default disables tax clearance across every head (Section 80A/ITF 263) — payroll discipline protects the whole business, not just the P2.

Table 1 — The Employee Management module mapped to the Thirteenth Schedule

Table 2 — Employee vs contractor (the classification that decides everything)

Table 3 — The two deadlines an employer must never confuse

flowchart TD
 A[New worker engaged] --> B{Independent trade?
para 1 a}
 B -->|Yes contractor| C[Not on P2
Section 80 / REV 5 30% if no ITF 263]
 B -->|No employee| D{Paid above
Section 14 2 a i threshold?}
 D -->|No| E[Record on Employees page
no tax to withhold yet]
 D -->|Yes| F[Earnings page:
value pay + benefits, strip 6th Sched pension]
 F --> G{Pay currency?}
 G -->|USD| H[USD table -> USD stream]
 G -->|ZiG| I[ZiG table -> ZiG stream]
 H --> J[Add AIDS Levy 3% of tax]
 I --> J
 J --> K[Assessment of Employee Earnings: review]
 K --> L[P2 per currency -> file + pay by 10th]
 L --> M[Year-end: ITF 16 + reconcile 12 P2s = sum ITF 16]

Statutes & sections - Income Tax Act [Chapter 23:06], Thirteenth Schedule ("Employees' Tax", Sections 71–73): para 1 (definitions — employee, employer, remuneration and its carve-outs, employees' tax certificate, non-resident employer, remuneration liable to employees' tax); para 2 (employer registration within 14 days; address-change/cessation notice); para 2A (principals register for subordinate persons); para 3 (duty to withhold to the prescribed tables; remit by the 10th; para 3(1b) separate foreign-currency determination); para 4 (per-employee records; annual returns within 30 days); para 5 (accrual); paras 6–8 (protection; void no-withholding agreement; derogation over other deduction laws); para 9 (deceased estates directive); para 10 (personal liability for tax + further equal amount; estimation under Section 45); para 11 (remission absent intent to evade); para 12 (recovery from employee, but not the penalty); para 13 (insolvency priority); paras 14–15 (employees' tax certificate / ITF 16; forms; 6-year retention); para 16 (employee tax-code declaration within 7 days); paras 17–19 (crediting/refund of employees' tax); para 20 (Commissioner's directives); para 20A (Final Deduction System). - Income Tax Act [Chapter 23:06] Section 8(1) — gross-income paragraphs (a)/(b)/(c)/(f) drawn into "remuneration" (taxable benefits); Section 37A(8)/para 20A filing exemption; Section 37AA (separate-currency returns/accounting); Section 80 (30% withholding on contracts absent ITF 263); Section 80A (clearance/ITF 263); Section 45 (estimated assessments, applied by para 10(3)); Section 71/Section 73 (payment of employees' tax; interest, SI 212 of 2022). - Finance Act [Chapter 23:04] Section 14(2)(a)(i) — annual tax-free threshold defining "employee" (2025: USD 1,200 / ZiG 33,600); Finance (No.2) Act 7 of 2024 — 2025 PAYE bands. - National AIDS Council Act [Chapter 15:14] read with the Finance Act — AIDS Levy at 3% of the income tax. - VAT Act [Chapter 23:12] Section 28(1) — referenced only to contrast the 15th VAT deadline with the 10th PAYE deadline.

Case law - The Endeavour Foundation and UDC Ltd v COT (95-SC-095) — annotated to para 10/11; remission of the failure-to-withhold penalty available only where there was no intent to evade. (Confirmed in the Act's own annotation.) - PIL v ZIMRA (17-HH-213) — contextual; the employer's records (here the Employee Management register and Earnings data) are the records ZIMRA scrutinises; no computer/laptop seizure. - No reported Zimbabwean case exists on the SSP Employee Management screens themselves (stated honestly). Employee-vs-contractor classification turns on the common-law contract-of/for-service tests; any foreign authority is persuasive only. `

ZIMRA guidance - Comprehensive Guide to the ZIMRA Self-Service Portal — ZIMRA External Guide (§8 Employee Management: Employees, Earnings, Assessment of Employee Earnings; year-end ITF 16 reconciliation). Primary procedural source for this lesson. - Comprehensive Guide to Form P2 — ZIMRA External Guide and the 2025 USD/ZiG tax tables — confirmed P2 structure and the table reference points reused here (via tarmspayereturn/tarmspayeworkflow). - Zimbabwe Tax Compliance Calendar — monthly PAYE/P2 cadence. - The SSP online help (https://mytaxselfservice.zimra.co.zw/help/ssp/en/default.htm) was unreachable for this lesson (empty JavaScript shell); field-level screen specifics on the Employees and Earnings forms are flagged `.