The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) recorded a 16% increase in VAT collections, topping KSh 32.141 billion as at the close of May 2025.
- •The Large and Medium Taxpayers (LMT) Department, where majority of the beneficiaries are domiciled, recorded a 13% growth in VAT, surpassing the target by over Kshs. 1 billion.
- •The Micro and Small Taxpayers (MST) Department registered a 24% growth, surpassing the VAT target by Kshs. 110 million.
- •The taxman has also said that it is planning to deactivate more than 20, 000 inactive taxpayer accounts.
“It is noteworthy that the VAT burden is currently being shouldered by only 22% of the VAT registered taxpayers, with the rest either being credit filers (52%) or Nil/zero filers (26%),” KRA said.
The performance has been attributed to a wide raft of measures implemented during the month of April to enhance compliance and seal loopholes that have been exploited to perpetrate tax fraud.
Since August 2022, KRA says it has implemented the VAT Special Table within the iTax system as a compliance enforcement tool designed to address VAT compliance challenges.
The Special Table restricts other taxpayers from claiming input tax credits from the taxpayers on special table, and from filing unless they are cleared. This helps in curbing frauds, reducing PIN abuse and protecting compliant taxpayers.
KRA says that as a result 20,981 inactive taxpayers have been identified for deregistration to clean the register and 7,719 suspected “Missing Trader’ scheme enablers have been placed on the Special Table, restricting input tax claims from these entities and disrupting fraudulent chains from May 2025 and beyond.
