Introduction
If you have received an email or notice from the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), it is likely to be about one of the following issues: reminders to file your tax returns, enquiries into your personal tax affairs, or something more serious such as a tax audit.
If you are a businessperson or a director of a company, you may have received a letter about your company’s tax obligations such as corporate income tax (CIT), Value Added Tax (VAT) or Pay As You Earn (PAYE) returns.
If you fall in either of these categories, Don’t panic! Most of the time, these emails or notices are part of KRA’s general notices on your tax affairs such as reminders to file your tax returns and reminders to make tax payments. These general notices are usually sent to numerous taxpayers, so you are not alone.
Nonetheless, it is extremely important to open and read every email/notice from the KRA carefully to make sure the contents do not include any adverse issues regarding your tax affairs that you may need to respond to.
In this article, we look at some of the common emails/notices you may receive from KRA so that you know exactly what to do if you get one of these emails/notices.
Let’s start with the basics first:
- Open any email or notice you receive from KRA
This is our first piece of advice. From our experience the truth is many of us don’t open these emails/notices from KRA. While this may be understandable given the numerous emails people receive throughout the day, you’ll only be storing up problems if there is an issue you need to deal with or respond to.
Fortunately, many of these emails/notices simply tell you what you need to know e.g. deadlines to file and pay your taxes. However, you’ll never know what the emails/notices contain unless you open them.
- Ensure that the email or notice is genuine
Our second tip is to ensure that the letter is genuine. In today’s online world, scam emails are common – but there are scam notices/letters too.
Generally, with genuine emails/notices, KRA will give you details on how to contact them to discuss a genuine late payment and a way forward. Considering this, one can check that the contact email addresses contained in the email/notice to confirm they are in line with the KRA official email addresses. If you get a letter that asks for your bank details or give bank details for payment then you should always err on the side of caution.
We advise speaking to your accountant or tax advisor in case you get any emails/notice that:
- you have reasons to suspect are not genuine; or
- that ask you to ‘act immediately’; or
- it’s the first time you’re hearing from KRA about an ‘urgent payment’.
- Read the email or notice and its contents carefully.
- Now that you have confirmed that the email/notice is genuine and you have read it, we provide below some of the common emails/notices that you may receive as well as some quick tips you can implement depending on the contents of the email.
- Situation 1:
If the email/notice is a reminder to file your taxes and make payments.
KRA often send reminders periodically to file your tax returns on time. It does not mean that you have passed your deadline, or you have made a mistake. If you are an individual taxpayer or a director of a company, you will receive these letters by default.
