Kenyan taxpayers wishing to claim expenses from suppliers who do not have personal identification numbers (PINs) generated by the taxman can now do so, in a major shift in the country’s tax administration landscape.

This means that even expenses from the country’s vast informal sector, including those from roadside vendors, the jua kali sector and the matatu sector, can now be presented before Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) for income tax deductible purposes.

This follows a decision by the government to suspend, from May 17, 2026, the mandatory requirement that all invoices used to claim expenses be supported by a supplier’s PIN, a provision that proved challenging for business operators seeking to make claims associated with supplies sourced from the vast informal economy.

Kenya introduced mandatory Income and Expenses Validation effective January 1, 2026, a measure that provides that KRA auto-populates taxpayers’ Income Tax returns based on invoices generated on the authority’s electronic Tax Invoice Management System (eTIMS).“Previously, taxpayers were required to include suppliers’ PINs for every expense line on the manual non-eTIMS file. For informal traders, matatu operators, farmers, roadside vendors and jua kali merchants this was practically impossible since most do not have a KRA PIN. This prevented legitimate expenses from being declared, taxpayers got stuck and filings were incomplete. With this update, the Supplier PIN field is now optional in filing,” KRA said in a statement released on May 19.

The relaxation of this requirement signals KRA’s quest to widen its visibility into players in the country’s informal sector given that the invoices submitted will still be required to capture the supplier’s name even though the requirement of a PIN has now been made optional.

According to data from KRA, 97,000 new taxpayers have paid $60.3 million (Ksh7.8 billion) worth of taxes between January and April 2026, after the commencement of the Income and Expenses validation exercise."Just looking at this year, from people who have never paid a single shilling in direct tax, by now they have paid Ksh7.8 billion. And that is just 97,000 taxpayers who have now come on board. They had never paid a single coin but in four months they have now paid Ksh7.8 billion and they have done it voluntarily," KRA Commissioner for Micro and Small Taxpayers George Obell said at a tax symposium organised by the Nation Media Group.

In the financial year 2026/27, which starts on July 1, 2026, KRA targets to collect $22.4 billion (Ksh2.9 trillion) in tax revenue with the Finance Bill 2026 earmarked to unlock $934.8 million (Ksh121 billion) in additional tax revenue.

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