Nairobi, July 13 -- The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) collections from tax defaulters in the year to June 30, 2026, were nearly 16 times higher than inflows from newly recruited taxpayers, indicating a struggle to widen the tax base.

Records show that KRA's debt recovery yielded Sh144.82 billion in the 2025/26 financial year compared with Sh9.1 billion generated from newly onboarded taxpayers, signalling the gains of enforcement campaigns on already existing groups.

Tax receipts from tax-base expansion (TBE) programmes such as onboarding previously untaxed individuals and businesses, reactivating nil and non-filers using third-party data, and assigning tax obligations that better reflect 'actual incomes' of taxpayers dropped 68.07 perce...