The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) plans to overhaul the income tax return filing infrastructure by abandoning the Excel file download and adopting use of a web-based system as it seeks to streamline filing following changes brought about by Finance Act 2026.
The law has amended Section 52 of the Income Tax Act to introduce a staggered system for filing income tax returns, with natural persons expected to file by the end of the fourth month following the end of their year of income.
Non-natural persons will be expected to file by the close of the sixth month following the end of their year of income.
The change means that effective January 1, 2027, Kenyans relying on employment income, most of whom have a December year-end, will be expected to file their returns by April 30 while companies will still be expected to file returns by June 30. KRA now says to further buttress the changes brought about by staggered income tax return filing, it will switch to a web-based system which means that taxpayers will now file returns directly on a browser over the internet as opposed to having to download and populate an Excel file as they have been doing.
“We have staggered returns in Finance Act 2026 so that individual returns will be due by April 30 and the non-natural persons’ returns will be due by June 30. Are we transferring the problem we had in June to April? Absolutely not because there are other things we are doing to ensure the system will be stable,” KRA’s Chief Manager in charge of Policy and Tax, Josephine Mugure, said at a townhall convened by the Institute of Certified Public Accountants (ICPAK).
“The first thing is that we are introducing web-based returns so that we will not require taxpayers to fill the Excel file anymore. It will be web-based and significantly simplified,” Mugure said.
Web-based return filing, which is expected to be rolled out in the course of 2027, will be the latest among a number of measures that KRA has taken to streamline the income tax return filing process and widen visibility of the country’s taxable base.
On April 1, 2026, KRA introduced filing of Income Tax Returns via social media platform WhatsApp as it targeted boosting compliance amongst Kenyans whole income tax returns were not complicated.
The taxman says the planned overhaul of the Income Return Filing System includes widening the scope of the filing that can be done via WhatsApp to accommodate more complex and voluminous returns.
The upgrade of WhatsApp Income Tax return filing includes equipping KRA’s AI-powered virtual assistant, Shuru, with stronger capabilities.
“We want to expand what filing Kenyans will be able to do via WhatsApp so that it won’t just be what we have had for employees,” Mugure said.
“We will expand it such that you will be able to file a whole range of returns via WhatsApp. In 2027, Shuru will have been here for more than six months and whatever teething problems she encountered this year will have been resolved and she will be of better use.”
Kenya started Incomes and Expenses Validation on January 1, 2026 in a measure that was designed to set the stage for adoption of auto-population of Income Tax Returns by KRA.
Finance Act 2026 has since anchored auto-population of Income Tax Returns in law by amending Section 75 of the Tax Procedures Act to provide that KRA may use ICT systems including eTIMS invoices, Withholding Tax Certificate, Customs data and third-party data to generate an auto-populated Income Tax Return on behalf of a taxpayer.
