The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has given a 30-days grace period for non-compliant taxpayers to regularize their tax status.
Last month, the taxman had warned of de-activating personal identification numbers of non-compliant taxpayers starting Thursday last week.
This could have blocked millions of Kenyans from accessing services that require one to have a pin from KRA.
The 30-days grace period also allows those who did not file their returns by June 30 this year to do so.
“This is to inform you that, your return for obligation Income Tax-Resident Individual and period from: 01/01/2016 to 31/12/2016 is not received by the Kenya Revenue Authority by the due date 30/06/2017,” stated KRA in one of the notices according to Business Daily.
It added: “Kindly submit your return within the next 30 days ending on 01/10/2017. Failure to submit return will attract penalty/interest.”
Individuals who failed to file their returns by end of June were liable to a fine of sh20, 000.
The grace period given by the Authority is seen to have come after the National Treasury piled more pressure on the KRA to collect more returns.
It also came barely a week after KRA maintained it would go ahead and delist defaulters as from Thursday last week.
Individuals risked being delisted by KRA include those who did not file their returns as well as those who have not migrated their profiles to the authority’s online system, iTax.
KRA’s move to de-activate the pins had been termed illegal.
“KRA does not issue PINs to citizens as a favour but as provided for in the law, in the same way the Department of Registration of Persons issue Identity cards or Passports,” noted lawyer Nashon Aluoka.
By Pharis Kinyua. He’s an online Journalist and an author for Jamhuri News