Thousands of users were, as at Friday evening, still reeling from inconvenience due to an outage on the Kenya Revenue Authority’s (KRA) electronic business invoicing platform, eTIMS.
What started as a 20-hour-long scheduled maintenance between Wednesday 6pm and Thursday 2pm ended up prolonging into the weekend as KRA left taxpayers at a loss on what to do regarding the generation of invoices to support their transactions and make claims on deductible expenses.
All parties engaged in business in Kenya, including companies, partnerships, and sole proprietors, are required to use eTIMS to generate invoices.
On Friday at 3.58pm, KRA issued a second notice to taxpayers, citing inability to resuscitate eTIMS on account of a technical hitch.
“The Kenya Revenue Authority notifies all stakeholders that the eTIMS online portal is currently experiencing a technical hitch. Our technical team is actively working to restore the service as soon as possible,” KRA said in its Friday notice.
The Finance Act 2023 amended the Income Tax Act, providing that effective January 1, 2024, only expenses backed by eTIMS invoices are deemed eligible for tax deduction, therefore locking out anyone who will seek to reduce their tax burden using invoices generated outside the eTIMS system.
The Finance Act 2026 has tightened eTIMS enforcement by introducing new penalty floors for non-compliance such that failure to use the system attracts a minimum penalty of Sh100,000 for companies and Sh10,000 for individuals.
The use of eTIMS invoices has been instrumental in widening KRA’s quest to widen the tax base in the economy by enhancing its visibility of transactions taking place.
“Some of the technological milestones that KRA has made include enhancement and expansion of the Electronic Tax Invoice Management Systems (eTIMS) to strengthen transaction visibility and improve VAT compliance. As at June 30, 2026, a total of 750,915 taxpayers had onboarded on eTIMS,” KRA said on July 10, 2026, as it released its 2025/26 full year revenue outturn.
The prolonged downtime of the system is likely to trigger mismatches between what was actually transacted and what is captured in the system during the downtime period.
In 2026, many taxpayers faced challenges as KRA undertook an Incomes and Expenses Validation exercise starting January 1, an exercise designed to ensure that what taxpayers self-declared while filing their income tax returns tallied with what was captured in the auto-populated eTIMS system.
