By Antynet Ford
The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) is seeking to transform tax administration with the VAT pre-populated return filling system for the November 2024 tax period, which is due by 20 December 2024.
This initiative is a significant step towards simplifying the VAT return filing process while leveraging technology to enhance VAT compliance and customer experience.
The VAT pre-populated return presents a paradigm shift from requiring manual data analysis in preparing VAT returns to prepopulating a return from integrated data obtained from digital platforms such as iTax, TIMS, eTIMS, and customs business systems, to ease the burden on tax reporting processes for VAT registered taxpayers.
“The VAT pre-populated return filling system reflects KRA’s commitment to simplifying tax processes.” The Commissioner for Domestic Taxes has stated.
“We are empowering businesses with a more transparent, efficient, and user-friendly tax reporting system as we explore further possibilities of a fully web based VAT return and a taxpayer dashboard to provide real time view of all the sales and purchases for a given taxpayer.” He added.
VAT registered taxpayers are required to issue and transmit electronic tax invoices to KRA through TIMS/eTIMS for all their sales as required by law.
With the aid of a QR code reader and an invoice checker that can be accessed on itax.kra.go.ke, taxpayers can verify whether their purchase invoices have been generated from TIMS/eTIMs or not and whether they include buyer details required for input tax claims.
VAT registered taxpayers must verify the accuracy of their pre-populated VAT returns before submission to avoid errors in their filled VAT returns.