eTIMS deadlines and KRA enforcement timeline (2024–2026)
The major eTIMS deadlines have already passed. Issuing eTIMS invoices has been mandatory since 1 September 2023, expenses without eTIMS invoices have been non-deductible since 1 January 2024, and from January 2026 KRA validates declared income and expenses against eTIMS data when assessing returns.
If your business is still operating outside eTIMS, you are not waiting for a deadline; you are already past every one of them. This article walks through what happened, when, and what KRA is enforcing today.
September 2023: the mandate begins
eTIMS became mandatory for VAT-registered taxpayers from 1 September 2023, when KRA shifted away from the older TIMS / ETR hardware regime. From that date, VAT-registered businesses were required to issue invoices through eTIMS rather than through the legacy ETR machine, and KRA began receiving transmissions in real time.
A grace window followed during which KRA accepted that businesses were still onboarding, but new invoices needed to go through eTIMS as soon as registration completed. Several businesses missed this because they assumed the ETR machine would keep working indefinitely; in many cases it did not, because providers stopped servicing legacy units.
January 2024: expenses without eTIMS become non-deductible
The Finance Act 2023 introduced what became, in practice, the most painful deadline. From 1 January 2024, any business expense not backed by a compliant eTIMS invoice from the supplier is non-deductible against income tax. The cost still leaves your bank account; you just cannot use it to reduce your taxable profit.
This is the rule that quietly forced thousands of small suppliers onto eTIMS, because their corporate and NGO customers stopped accepting handwritten receipts and informal invoices. From the buyer's point of view, paying a supplier without an eTIMS invoice means paying full tax on a cost they actually incurred, which is not a sustainable position.
2024: Legal Notice 64 of 2024 and the regulations
Legal Notice No. 64 of 2024, the Tax Procedures (Electronic Tax Invoice) Regulations, formalised the rules: who must register, what an invoice must contain, when transmission must happen, what record-keeping is required, and what the penalties are for non-compliance. The regulations extended the obligation beyond VAT-registered taxpayers to every person carrying on business, with a narrow list of exempt supplies.
The regulations also formalised the buyer-initiated invoicing mechanism for very small suppliers (turnover under KES 5 million), which lets a registered buyer generate a self-billed eTIMS invoice on a small supplier's behalf so the expense remains deductible.
January 2026: KRA enforcement of income/expense validation
From January 2026, KRA validates declared income and declared expenses directly against eTIMS data when reviewing tax returns. Mismatches between what a business reports and what its eTIMS records show are flagged automatically. Expenses claimed without a matching eTIMS invoice from the supplier are disallowed, and undeclared income detected through eTIMS invoices issued in a business's name is added to taxable income.
This is the deadline that is reshaping daily business practice in Kenya. Until 2025, many businesses had partial eTIMS coverage; from January 2026, partial coverage equals a tax mismatch, and a tax mismatch is now treated as a flag rather than an investigation that may or may not happen later.
What is currently being enforced
As of 2026, KRA is enforcing all of the following simultaneously: real-time transmission of every sale through one of the eTIMS channels, deductibility of expenses only against eTIMS invoices, validation of declared income and expenses against eTIMS records, and the requirement that a Tax Compliance Certificate (needed for tenders, permits and many corporate contracts) lists eTIMS registration as a precondition.
The penalty for issuing a non-compliant invoice is up to KES 1 million or 10% of the tax involved, whichever is higher. But for most businesses the bigger commercial pressure is the deduction rule and the TCC requirement, which together close off a large slice of formal trade to anyone outside eTIMS.
Catching up if you are behind
- Register on eTIMS today. There is no benefit to waiting. The longer you operate outside eTIMS, the more historical sales there are with no compliant record, which is what KRA will see when validating income.
- Audit your last 12 months of expenses. For every meaningful purchase, confirm you hold a compliant eTIMS invoice from the supplier. Where you do not, contact the supplier to reissue if they are registered, or arrange buyer-initiated invoicing if they qualify.
- Move every sale onto a compliant channel going forward. Stop issuing manual receipts immediately. Move to eTIMS Lite if you are a small service business, or to a certified POS integrator if you run a shop or restaurant, so future sales are clean from the day you switch.
How Veira handles this
Veira keeps you continuously compliant on the income side: every sale you make on a Veira terminal issues and transmits an eTIMS invoice in the same step, so there is no backlog and no separate workflow. For expenses, Veira holds your supplier invoices alongside your sales records, which is the position KRA wants you in when it validates your return.
Related articles
The full definition: what KRA's electronic Tax Invoice Management System is, why it exists, and what it replaced.
The KES 1M penalty, lost deductions, TCC blocks, and audit risk. What non-compliance actually costs.
iTax onboarding, channel selection, the documents you need, and the errors that derail most registrations.
The hub for every eTIMS topic, basics, how-to, by business type, and accountant resources.
Veira handles KRA eTIMS automatically, on your phone, even offline. See Veira pricing or try our free tax and business calculators.