Over 5.5 million Kenyans had filed their 2020 tax returns ahead of Wednesday’s midnight deadline on filing.
This means that 1.1 million more taxpayers turned out to file their returns this year compared to the 4.4 million who filed their returns last year, reflecting a 19 percent growth.
KRA has attributed the growth to “efficiency of the iTax platform, effective taxpayer sensitization on filing of returns and efficient taxpayer support services through the KRA Contact Centre and Tax Service Offices across the country as well as extension of working staff hours.”
By June 29, about 5,027,639 Kenyans had filed returns to surpass the number of filings made at the same time last year- 4,084,372.
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Following the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, the KRA has encouraged Kenyans to leveraged the automated iTax System to relay the returns in place of physically visiting the support centers.
Currently there are about 6.1 million taxpayers who are registered on iTax and the taxman projects to increase the number of active taxpayers by 2 million, to 8.2 million by end of June 2023.
KRA Kenyans to file returns early, beginning January of every calendar year, to avoid last minute rush that comes around on the 30th June deadline.
The penalty for late filing of annual returns for Income Tax Individual according to KRA is Kh.s.2000 or 5 percent of tax due whichever is higher, while Income Tax for Non-Individual is Ksh.20,000 or 5 percent of tax due whichever is higher.
