The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has announced sweeping changes to the country's income tax return filing system, including scrapping the Excel-based filing process for a web-based platform.

🇰🇪 Breaking It Down

The changes aim to make tax compliance easier for both individual taxpayers and companies while reducing system congestion during the annual filing season, particularly when the filing deadline nears.

Speaking on the reforms, KRA Chief Manager for Policy and Tax Advisory Josephine Mugure said taxpayers will no longer be required to download and fill Excel sheets before submitting their annual returns.

"We are not going to require you to fill out the Excel sheet anymore. It will be web-based and simplified for all the annual returns, both for individuals and companies, making it less system-intensive and less tedious," Mugure said.

📌 What You Need to Know

She added that KRA will also eliminate the validation process that slowed filing during the previous tax season, explaining that the checks were necessary only because KRA was validating eTIMS data for the first time.

"We will not have validation. Validation happened this time because we were validating eTIMS for the first time. That is not going to be there," she explained.

In addition to the new filing platform, Mugure disclosed that KRA is upgrading its iTax system, with the improvements expected to be in place by April next year.

The Finance Act 2026 has also introduced staggered deadlines for filing income tax returns to ease pressure on KRA's systems during peak periods.

Under the new timelines, individual taxpayers will now be required to file their annual returns by April 30, while companies and other non-natural persons will have until June 30 to submit their returns.

"We have staggered the filing of returns in the Finance Act 2026. The individual filers will be due on April 30, while the non-natural persons will be due on June 30," Mugure said.

📰 Source: Kenyans.co.ke