Kenyan taxpayers are up in arms on social media over the chronic and worsening performance of the Kenya Revenue Authority’s Integrated Tax System, commonly known as iTax, a platform that has been breaking down repeatedly for the past four months and is now drawing comparisons to the manual filing systems Kenyans used in the 1990s and early 2000s.
KRA purchased the iTax system from Tata Africa Holdings Kenya Limited, but its performance has been a source of growing frustration for millions of taxpayers, accountants and businesses who depend on it to file returns and meet statutory deadlines.
According to well-placed sources, the poor performance of the system is not merely a technical problem but a human one, with those managing KRA’s IT infrastructure lacking the competence required for the job, having been appointed through nepotism and tribalism rather than merit.
Since Monday, the iTax system has been intermittently breaking down, blocking taxpayers from filing returns and triggering automatic late penalties that many argue are entirely unjust given that the failure lies with KRA and not with the taxpayer.
On Wednesday, the frustration boiled over on social media as thousands of Kenyans took to various platforms to vent their anger over a system that is costing taxpayers millions of shillings in monthly maintenance fees yet continues to deliver third-rate performance consistentl
KRA acknowledged the disruptions on September 16th, ahead of the VAT filing deadline, and urged users to simply retry later, a response that taxpayers found thoroughly inadequate given the scale and persistence of the problem.
Calls are now growing louder for KRA to invoke Section 89(5A) of the Tax Procedures Act, which provides for the waiver of penalties arising from electronic system errors, a relief measure the authority applied in July 2025 but has not yet committed to replicating for the current disruptions.
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CPA Wachira, a Kenyan accountant who has become one of the most vocal voices on the crisis, captured the exhaustion and frustration of an entire profession in a widely shared post.
“We have a crisis. For the last four months- June, July, August and now September- iTax, the primary system for filing returns and collecting Kenyan taxes, has experienced downtimes of monumental proportions. As a result, taxpayers have been unable to file returns on time, or have had to wait until the system wakes up before they can file. This has caused immense damage to many. Accountants, for example, have confessed that they no longer have a life. They sleep on the iTax portal. Refreshing. All night,” Wachira wrote.
KRA manages a database of over eight million registered taxpayers and has spent enormous amounts of public money acquiring and maintaining a system that, by any objective measure, is failing the very people it was designed to serve.
Four months of persistent downtime, automatic penalties, sleepless accountants and zero accountability from KRA management is not a technical glitch. It is a governance failure of the highest order, and those responsible must be held to account.
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