Tax help, in your language,
in your ward.
A woman entrepreneur in South Africa is not short of skill or ambition. She is short of access. Corporate supplier databases, municipal tenders, SEFA and NEF funding, NYDA grants, formal credit lines, and procurement programmes at every level of government and large business all want the same one thing from her before they will engage: proof of tax compliance. That proof is the gateway, not the goal. It is also the proof most women entrepreneurs in rural wards and townships cannot produce.
Zimela is built to put that proof in her hands. The platform turns her household and side hustle activity into the records a tax return needs. Audio lessons in seven South African languages explain what the formal system asks of her, in language she actually uses. A trained woman ambassador in her own ward walks her in. A tax professional from MD Tax, registered with SAIT, replies on WhatsApp or in writing, takes her position, registers her where she needs to be registered, and brings her into compliance. The doors that compliance opens (corporate suppliers, municipal contracts, development finance, formal credit) stop being theoretical.
Seven working surfaces,
already built.
Every flow below is functional today in a development environment. The remaining work between now and pilot launch is operational: ambassadors, WhatsApp credentials, audio recording, and deployment to AWS Cape Town for South African data residency.
- I.Tax Access · Connect
Ask MD Tax: written advice
For when she needs a considered answer with the evidence in writing.
A beneficiary opens a thread inside Zimela with her question and any photo evidence. A tax professional from MD Tax, registered with SAIT, replies inside Zimela, typically within one working day. Every reply carries the professional’s verification badge: name, SAIT membership number, registration status, and expiry date.
II.Tax Access · ChatChat with MD Tax, live on WhatsApp
For when waiting a working day is too long.
Her messages from the Zimela live chat are bridged to Merryll Daniels’ WhatsApp through the WhatsApp Business Cloud API. Merryll replies on her own WhatsApp; her replies flow back into the Zimela chat as they happen. The conversation is recorded inside Zimela for her reference.
III.Records · Tax HealthTax Health score from her ITR12
A score from 0 to 100, built section by section from the SARS individual return.
Twenty two sections of the SARS ITR12 (1 to 18 excluding farming sections 10 to 12, plus 28 to 34). For each section she states that she has the evidence, marks it not applicable, or uploads a photograph. Local Tesseract OCR with sharp preprocessing pulls out the fields. A practitioner verifies.
- IV.Community · Clinics
Local tax clinics in your ward
A monthly clinic, led by a trained woman ambassador, with a visiting practitioner.
Ambassadors are recruited from the community, paid a stipend, and host the clinic in a community venue: a hall, church, library or municipal service node. Attendance is captured for monitoring. The clinic is the face to face trust layer that brings women onto the platform.
V.Tax Access · TriageQuick Helper triage bot
Plain answers to the questions women actually search for.
Structured triage answering the most common personal tax questions: refunds, deductions, filing status, deadlines. Topics and follow ups are drawn directly from MD Tax’s own search demand data. For anything beyond simple help, the bot opens a Connect or Chat thread. It never makes a determination that affects a return.
VI.Education · AudioMoney Lessons in seven languages
Audio led, because data and reading are barriers in the target wards.
A curriculum focused on tax, recorded in isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sesotho, Sepedi, Setswana, Afrikaans and English. Listen on a basic data plan. The lessons are sized to be cached once and replayed offline.
VII.Records · MoneyMoney: household and side hustle, in one place
What comes in, what goes out, what stays. The records a tax conversation needs.
Household income and expenses, plus side hustle sales and costs, in one unified surface. Forty seven default South African categories: salary, wages, piece work, every SASSA grant, rent, school fees, transport, side hustle costs. She can edit, delete and add custom categories.
Three layers,
one programme.
The programme is built on what Women’s World Banking research finds works in practice: trust in digital financial tools grows fastest when training is led by trusted local peers, and when there is a visible human layer alongside the technology. Zimela’s three layers translate that finding into delivery.
- Layer I.
Tax access
A verified channel to a tax professional registered with SAIT.
- Connect: async written advice, replied to inside Zimela.
- Chat: live, bridged to the practitioner’s WhatsApp.
- Quick Helper: triage for the most common questions.
- Layer II.
Community
A network of trained women ambassadors based in the wards.
- Recruited from each pilot ward and paid a stipend.
- Monthly local tax clinics with a visiting practitioner.
- WhatsApp groups, onboarding, in person referrals.
- Layer III.
Records and evidence
The records that make a tax conversation possible.
- Money: unified household and side hustle ledger.
- Tax Health: 0 to 100 score across twenty two ITR12 sections.
- Photo evidence with local OCR and practitioner verification.
The woman is
the primary user.
Putting the woman at the centre is not a gender statement. It is a response to how households actually work and to the evidence on what improves women’s financial agency.
MD Tax’s own paid search data sharpens this further: women aged 18 to 24 and 25 to 34 are the two largest demographic segments seeing tax help ads, and across every age cohort under 55, women outscore men on impressions.
- i.
Rural women in households headed by women
Women managing welfare grants, remittances and informal income in B3 and B4 municipalities. Many have never engaged with SARS; the programme helps them understand whether their income mix creates any tax position.
- ii.
Township women running informal microenterprises
Spaza shops, hairdressers, cooks, dressmakers, cleaners, traders and crèche operators. The path is cashbook discipline, then evidence, then a tax conversation, then a Tax Compliance Status PIN, then a credible funding application.
- iii.
Women in stokvels and savings groups
Treasurers, secretaries and members of stokvels run by women. The programme helps them understand whether income flowing through the stokvel creates a tax position for them personally.
- iv.
Young women in transition
Women aged 18 to 35 moving from learnership or unemployment into self employment or first formal employment. MD Tax’s search data confirms women aged 18 to 34 are the largest searching cohort.
Zimela + MD Tax.
Zimela Skills and Fintech Hub NPC builds the access, education, planning and referral platform. MD Tax delivers the regulated tax advice service behind it, through tax professionals registered with SAIT.
Zimela Skills and Fintech Hub NPC
- · Section 21 not for profit company
- · Operates the Zimela platform and ambassador programme
- · Holds donor relationships and funder reporting
- · Owns the user experience and the records layer, built for women
- CIPC Reg. No.
- 2025/968396/08
- Type
- NPC
MD Tax
- · Registered South African tax practice
- · Tax professionals registered with SAIT
- · Delivers Connect (written) and Chat (live on WhatsApp) advice channels
- · All formal representation work remains inside MD Tax’s own systems
- Reg. No.
- 2024/033897/07
- SAIT Practitioner
- PR0094845
- BBBEE Status
- Level 1 Contributor
Four ways
to work with us.
- Beneficiaries
Use Zimela
Join the pilot when it opens in your ward. Get verified tax help in your language.
Join the pilot list → - Women in the community
Become an ambassador
Trained, paid a stipend during the project, hosting a monthly clinic and supporting women on the platform.
Apply as an ambassador → - Tax practitioners
Reply on Connect or Chat
Tax professionals registered with SAIT can sign up to take threads through the verified MD Tax channels.
Partner with MD Tax → - Funders & partners
Fund the pilot
Sponsor an ambassador cohort, fund the audio curriculum in a local language, or back the pilot in your province. Match funding and partnerships welcome.
Talk to Zimela →
Let’s put this on the ground together.
Whether you’re a funder, a community organisation, a tax professional registered with SAIT or a woman who wants to bring Zimela to her ward, we’d like to hear from you.
- zimelanpc@gmail.com·Programme & partnerships
- merryll@mdtax.org·MD Tax practitioner channel
- WhatsApp Chat channel · bridged through the Zimela platform
- Operations · Cape Town, South Africa
Programme at a glance
- Applicant
- Zimela Skills and Fintech Hub NPC
- Tax partner
- MD Tax (registered tax practice)
- Focus
- Tax access, records and education, built for women
- Geography
- Rural and township wards across South Africa