Memo to Kenyans in Diaspora: KRA to Deactivate Idle PINs on August 31st

The Kenya Revenue Authority has announced that it will deactivate all PIN accounts which are yet to be registered on its iTax system on August 31st.

Million of Kenyans will likely lose their accounts, meaning they will be denied access to critical public services as the tax man bank on digitization to nab tax cheats.

In a notice, the tax collector agency advised all taxpayers to use the PIN checker available on its website to ascertain details of their suppliers and confirm if their PINs are active.

In the six months to June 30 this year, KRA said that 50 per cent of the 4.8 million registered taxpayers failed to file their 2016 returns, the number being more than double compared to 2.3 million Kenyans who failed to beat the tax return filing deadline within the same period in the previous financial year.

KRA failed to meet its tax target in the last financial year by over Sh50 billion, collecting Sh1.36 trillion against a target of 1.4 trillion.

“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 earlier this month.

“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.