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Starting in January 2027, It is KRA that shall FIRST calculate for you, what income it believes you & your business earned in 2026, And what income tax you shall therefore pay. KRA will do this by generating a pre populated income tax return using the information it already has, such as: - eTIMS data - PAYE records - Withholding tax records - Plus any other information KRA can find KRA shall then send you this pre filled return by 31st January 2027. Once you receive it, you have 60 days (February and March), and 2 OPTIONS only. To either: 1. Confirm & accept KRA generated return, if the numbers are correct. Or, 2. Reject & amend KRA generatd return, if KRA got the numbers wrong. If you take this route, you shall provide your own numbers together with supporting documents to KRA. - If you make your amendments late. Or, - You do not make any amendments at all, KRA shall congratulate you conclude that you have agreed with its originally generated assessment, and you shall pay the KRA generated tax bill. After that, you shall use the amended or originally accepted return to file your taxes as follows: - If you are a human being, file by April 30th 2027. - If you have no flesh & blood (company, partnership, trust, etc), file by June 30th. (Or the last day of the sixth month after your accounting year ends.) One more critical mistake to watch. - When that time comes, do not assume KRA's numbers are always correct. The law has expressly given you the right to accept or reject the pre-populated return before filing. Lessons: • Proper bookkeeping is King in 2026. • Mark the new tax timelines in your calendar. This is a new thing in Kenya, so reread slowly.

Yesterday, I received a lot of inquiries in my Dm. KRA has sent SMS messages to many people reminding them to pay their September instalment tax. Many are wondering, what animal is this instalment tax? If you are one of them, I have done a clear video explaining what instalment tax is, who should pay it, and who should not. Enjoy! youtu.be/8RlFaIKNAU0?si=nb9x…

We have a crisis. For the last four months. June, July, August and now September. iTax, the primary system for filing returns and collecting Kenyan taxes, has experienced downtimes of monumental proportions. As a result, taxpayers have been unable to file returns on time, or have had to wait until the system wakes up before they can file. This has caused immense damages to many. Accountants for example have confessed that they no longer have a life. They sleep on the iTax portal. Refreshing. All night. Then, a taxpayer fails to file on time because iTax is down. iTax later wakes up. The taxpayer files. Then KRA religiously airdrops a late filing penalty into the taxpayer's account and demands payment. This has elicited holy anger against KRA. Taxpayers are asking, why should I be penalised for failing to use a system that was not functioning? And this is a justified question. In my legally informed view, no taxpayer should be penalized for KRA's mistake. The Tax Procedures Act actually provides a mechanism for dealing with penalties and interest arising from KRA's system failures. Section 89(5A) allows CS John Mbadi, on the recommendation of KRA, to waive penalties or interest where they arose from, among other things, an error generated by an electronic tax system, a delay in updating the system or a malfunction of KRA system. KRA has previously waived penalties after iTax downtimes prevented taxpayers from filing on time. In July 2025, KRA announced that penalties and interest arising from the affected filing period would be waived. So here is my proposal. - As KRA works to fix and stabilise iTax & eTIMS, it should publicly assure taxpayers that penalties arising directly from its system failures shall be waived. Then go ahead and actually remove those penalties from taxpayers' accounts. It would be deeply immoral for KRA to profit from its own system failures. Is this too much to ask?