Giving Kenyan staff their P9A before returns are due
How a Kenyan employer produces each employee's P9A from approved pay runs, shares it securely and checks it, with returns moving to 30 April from 2027.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Running a business businesses in Kenya
Every year the same requests reach the HR inbox: staff asking for their P9A, staff querying the PAYE on it, staff needing it urgently because their return is half-done on iTax. Each employee files their own individual tax return, and the P9A, the employer's statement of their pay and tax for the year, is what they file it from.
An employer who sends every P9A early, correct and securely saves itself weeks of follow-up and saves staff from filing on guesswork. One who leaves it until staff start asking spends the first half of the year answering the same question over and over.
This article covers the year a P9A must cover, how to produce it from your payroll, how to get it to staff without e-mail attachments flying around, and the deadline change that brings the whole exercise forward from 2027.
The employee's year is the calendar year
In Kenya, the individual tax year is the calendar year. A P9A therefore covers January to December, whatever your company's own financial year. A business with a July year end still produces P9As for the calendar year, and its payroll records need to answer that question even though its accounts close at a different time.
The difference trips people up when an employee joins or leaves mid-year, or when the company changes its year end. Always ask "which calendar year?", not "which financial year?".
The P9A from approved runs
Achekam prepares a P9A for each employee for the year from approved pay runs, alongside the monthly P10, SHIF, NSSF and NITA schedules. It runs Kenyan payroll with PAYE, the Affordable Housing Levy, SHIF, NSSF Tier I and II and the NITA levy, so the figures on the P9A come from the same calculations as the monthly returns.
"Approved runs" is the important phrase. If December's run is still waiting for approval in January, the P9A for that year is incomplete. Make sure every run for the year has been approved before you produce the certificates.
Achekam's Kenyan payroll schedules download as its own CSV layout and as a PDF. Keep a copy of each employee's P9A with the payroll records for the year.
Staff cannot download it themselves yet
Achekam has an employee self-service area, but at the time of writing it shows only South African tax certificates (the IRP5 and IT3(a)). A Kenyan employee's P9A is available only on the payroll side. Staff cannot log in and fetch it.
That means the employer has to deliver each P9A. Doing it well is mostly a matter of choosing a safe channel.
Sharing it with a personal link
A P9A is personal: name, PIN, pay and tax for a whole year. Sending it as an open attachment to a shared or mistyped address is the kind of slip that is hard to undo.
Achekam's Document Centre gives you a better route. Upload each employee's P9A to a folder for the year; Document Centre is a folder-based store that keeps earlier versions when you upload a new one. Then share the document by e-mailing the employee a personal link. For each share you choose:
- an expiry, so the link does not stay open forever;
- an optional one-time code, which is worth using for a document like this;
- whether downloading is allowed, which it should be, since the employee needs the figures for iTax.
If you send a link to the wrong person, or an employee leaves before opening it, revoke the share. If a P9A has to be corrected, upload the corrected version and share it again, so the earlier version stays on record but the employee files from the right one.
Returns due 30 June, moving to 30 April
Kenyan individual tax returns are due by 30 June. From 1 January 2027 the deadline moves to 30 April, first for the 2026 year of income. In other words, the P9As you issue in early 2027 for the 2026 year will be needed two months sooner than staff are used to.
KRA's guide to filing returns walks employees, people with business income and nil filers through filing the annual return on iTax, with video walkthroughs. Linking to it in your covering note saves you answering how-to questions one by one.
A sensible target is to have every P9A out in the first weeks after the year's final run is approved, so that staff have months, not days, before the deadline.
Checking totals against the year's P10s
Each month you filed a P10 with each employee's PAYE. The P9A totals the same figures for the year, so the two should agree. Before you send anything, check:
- Every run for the calendar year is approved.
- For each employee, the P9A's tax total equals the sum of that employee's PAYE on the twelve P10s (or fewer, for someone who joined or left during the year).
- The total of all P9As equals the total PAYE filed for the year.
- Names and PINs match the employees' own records.
- Any differences are explained before the P9A goes out, not after an employee spots them.
A difference usually means a P10 was corrected after filing, or a late adjustment was paid outside the run. Find it now, while you can still correct the P10 on iTax if you need to. The monthly side of this check is in preparing the monthly P10 return.
Before the year closes
Put three dates in the payroll calendar now: the last pay run of the year, the date every P9A should be shared, and 30 April 2027 for the 2026 returns. For other areas where Kenyan payroll leans on a person rather than the software, see what Nigerian and Kenyan payroll leaves to you, and for how the employee's year sits beside the company's, Kenyan tax years explained.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
