KRA to deactivate taxpayers from iTax in bid to enforce compliance

Members of the public queue outside the Kenya Revenue Authority office in Nyeri on June 27,2016 to file their iTax returns. PHOTO KIBATA KIHU/STANDARD.

Taxpayers who have not regularised their details on the Kenya Revenue Authority’s online platform will be deactivated.

Such individuals and businesses have until the end of August to feed their details into the iTax platform, failing which their Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) will be removed from the system.

KRA also said businesses that file nil or no returns would have their PINs rendered inactive - which could prove costly for the enterprises as it would mean they are not tax-compliant. Many would miss out on opportunities with the Government and big corporations that require a firm to be compliant before it can do business with it.

“KRA has noted that there are taxpayers who have not migrated their PINs into iTax, while other taxpayers who are already in iTax are either not filing or those in active businesses are filing nil or no returns at all. In this regard, all PINs falling under these categories will be rendered inactive in the iTax platform,” said KRA in a public notice on Tuesday.

“KRA, therefore, notifies the general public that those who have not updated their PINs on iTax should do so by August 31, 2017 and commence filing immediately. Taxpayers who have not filed any tax returns for the last three months will be considered as not trading and their PINs rendered inactive,” said the notice.

Many individuals and businesses do not file tax returns while a substantial number of firms fail to declare the actual amounts they make and instead file a ‘nil’ return.

In the year to June 2017, KRA said about 2.4 million Kenyans filed tax returns, but this is just half of the about five million Kenyans who have PINs. 

Night operations

In a separate notice, KRA said small dhows will be allowed to operate for 24 hours along the Kenyan coastline after it lifted a ban on night operations. It said the small vessels will also be allowed to operate in Shimoni, Vanga, and Lamu besides the current Old Port.

“Dhows carrying edible oil, rice, sugar, electronics, and any other cargo will be allowed to offload goods for customs clearance at the port,” said the authority.

KRA has been keen to rake in customs revenue, whose growth in the last financial year was the highest for the past three years. The taxman attributed this to tighter enforcement measures through benchmarking of cargo values to address undervaluation, greater use of scanners, and stricter application of cargo auction processes.

It also got a boost in monitoring offshore illicit trade after the Government of Japan gave Kenya a grant to buy police patrol motorboats at a cost of Sh273 million.