Never Filed Your Returns? How to Catch Up With KRA

Start now: find out which returns are missing, rebuild your records for those periods, file true returns, then pay what is due or apply for a payment plan. Late filing charges apply, but for periods up to 31 December 2025, KRA’s amnesty can remove penalties and interest if you meet its conditions by 31 December 2026, including paying the principal tax.

Why waiting makes it harder

The Tax Procedures Act lets KRA act without your return.

• It can estimate your tax. A default assessment is KRA’s own best estimate, based on the information it has, and it includes penalties and interest from the original due date: section 29.
• It has more data. The Finance Act 2026 added section 29A, which lets KRA assess you from sources such as eTIMS invoices, withholding tax records and third party returns.
• Time may not protect you. Default assessments normally stop after five years, but not for gross or wilful neglect, evasion or fraud: section 29(5) and (6).
• Not filing is an offence. This applies where you have no reasonable cause: section 94.

Filing true returns yourself means the figures come from your own records.

How to catch up

1. Get into iTax and check your obligations. Your profile shows the taxes you are registered for. If you have no PIN, apply for one. If an obligation is wrong, ask your Tax Service Office, your local KRA office, to correct it, and see our waiver guide on charges caused by incorrect registration.
2. List every missing return. Go tax by tax and period by period, including periods when you had nothing to pay. KRA’s amnesty guidelines expect all outstanding returns to be filed. If some years are older than iTax, ask your Tax Service Office how to handle them.
3. Rebuild your records. Use bank and M-Pesa statements, sales and purchase invoices, eTIMS records, payroll, rent records and withholding certificates. You must keep tax records for five years: section 23. If your books are far behind, an accountant can rebuild them before you file.
4. File true returns. Declare all your income. Claim only what your records support. File a nil return only where the period truly had nothing to declare.
5. Pay or apply for a plan at the same time. A filed return you do not pay can lead to an agency notice on your bank account: section 42(14)(d). KRA’s guidelines approve up to six monthly instalments automatically on iTax. Longer plans go to your Tax Service Office.
6. Stay current from here. Use our filing deadlines calendar so that new gaps do not open.

Do not file false returns

Catching up only helps if the returns are true. Knowingly leaving income out of a return, or filing nil when you had income, is far worse than filing late.

• A deliberate false statement carries a penalty of 75 percent of the tax shortfall: section 84.
• It is also an offence: sections 96 and 97.
• KRA is not bound by your return, and can assess you using any information it has: section 24(2).

If you find a mistake after filing, you can apply to amend the return within five years: section 31(2) and (4). Telling KRA about a deliberate false statement before it finds out or starts an audit reduces the shortfall penalty by ten percentage points: section 84(4).

What it can cost

Late filing penalties under section 83 apply per return:

Return	Penalty
PAYE	25 percent of the tax, or KES 10,000 if higher
VAT or excise	5 percent of the tax, or KES 10,000 if higher
Turnover tax	KES 1,000
Other returns, company	5 percent of the tax, or KES 20,000 if higher
Other returns, individual	5 percent of the tax, or KES 2,000 if higher

Unpaid tax also carries a 5 percent late payment penalty (section 83A) and simple interest of 1 percent a month, capped at the amount of the tax (section 38).

Example. A VAT-registered company missed all 12 monthly VAT returns and its annual income tax return for one year. No tax was payable on any of them.

• VAT: 12 returns at KES 10,000 each comes to KES 120,000
• Income tax: 1 return at KES 20,000
• Total late filing penalties: KES 140,000

The minimums apply even with no tax to pay.

Where the amnesty fits

For periods up to 31 December 2025, the amnesty under section 37E works like this, according to KRA’s guidelines:

• Nil returns filed during the amnesty qualify automatically for relief on late filing penalties.
• Returns showing tax qualify once that principal tax is fully paid by 31 December 2026.
• Periods from 1 January 2026 are not covered, so those charges stay payable.
• Charges you have already paid are not returned, so read our tax amnesty guide before you pay, and enter only the principal amount.

Once 31 December 2026 has passed, this relief is closed. Do not count on another route afterwards. KRA says general waivers ended on 1 July 2025, and the Voluntary Tax Disclosure Programme under section 37D was set up for three years from 1 January 2021, so that period is over.