What KRA Already Knows About You Before You File

You haven't opened iTax. You haven't touched your receipts. You haven't even thought about June yet.

KRA already has your income figure.

That's not a scare tactic. It's just how the system works now. For years, the question every Kenyan freelancer quietly asked themselves in April was "will they find out?" That question is dead. KRA doesn't need to find out anything. It already knows. The only question left is whether your record matches theirs.

The old model vs. the new one

The old model: you file, KRA reads what you filed, and maybe, if something looks off, if you're unlucky, if a client gets audited, KRA cross-checks it against something else. Filing was the starting point of the conversation.

The new model: KRA builds your income figure first, from data it already has, and sends it to you. Filing isn't the start of the conversation anymore. It's your reply to a figure KRA already put on the table. From March 2026, that figure lands in your iTax account before you've logged in, a pre-populated return built entirely from data you didn't hand over yourself.

So the real question for 2025 isn't "how do I file." It's "where did KRA's number come from, and does it match mine."

The data map: where KRA's number actually comes from

Here's what feeds it.

eTims invoices. Every invoice generated under your KRA PIN, yours to a client or a supplier's to you, is transmitted to KRA the moment it's issued through the eTims system. If a client paid you through a registered eTims invoice, that income is in KRA's system before you've even been paid. This is the single biggest input into your pre-populated figure.

WHT certificates. If your client is a company, a government body, or an institution, they were required to deduct 5% withholding tax from your invoice before paying you, and to file that deduction with KRA. That filing happens on the client's side, independent of anything you do. Which means KRA knows what Safaricom, or Wona Films, or that agency paid you, because their accountant already told KRA. You don't have to declare it for KRA to know it happened.

The asymmetry that catches people off guard

Here's the part that actually matters for what you do next.

Say you took a matatu from the office to a shoot in Westlands. You paid KES 200 in cash. No receipt, no eTims number, nothing. KRA has no record of that KES 200, and never will, unless you tell them about it, with documentation.

Now say that same day, the client paid you KES 85,000 for the shoot, through an eTims-registered invoice. KRA has that figure. Precisely. Automatically. Without your involvement.

This is the asymmetry: your income is visible to KRA by default. Your expenses are not. Nobody automatically reports your business costs on your behalf. If you don't log them, properly, with the documentation KRA now requires, they simply don't exist as far as your return is concerned. You end up taxed on the full KES 85,000, with nothing to offset it, even though the job genuinely cost you money to deliver.

This is exactly the trap that caught 392,162 Kenyan taxpayers who had WHT deducted in 2024 but filed nil returns anyway, most of them freelancers who assumed the WHT deduction was the end of their tax obligation. It wasn't. KRA is now sending pre-populated returns to every one of them.

So what do you actually do with this

Not panic. The pre-populated figure isn't an accusation. It's a starting point for a conversation you can win, if you show up with your own records.

Three scenarios, and they're worth knowing before you're staring at the number on iTax:

1. KRA's figure matches yours. Confirm it, file, move on.
2. KRA's figure is higher than yours. Don't assume they're wrong. Check for income you forgot: stock photography, YouTube, a job you didn't invoice through eTims properly.
3. KRA's figure is lower than yours, or missing your expenses entirely. This is where most creatives lose money they didn't have to lose. If you can't show your own documented expenses, KRA's number stands, and you pay tax on income you never actually kept.

The shift here isn't really about tax law. It's about who's holding the receipts. KRA has been holding yours, on the income side, for a while now. The only side of the ledger you control is the expense side, and only if you build the habit of logging it as it happens, not in the last week of June with a shoebox of paper.

Tax ndio ina kushinda, but only if you let it. The people who aren't stressed on June 30th have already organised their books and records. Their figures already match what KRA can see, months before the number ever shows up in iTax.