Key findings
Kenya’s Phase 2 review demonstrates their continued commitment to the international standard for transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes with an overall rating of “Largely Compliant”. Generally, Kenya’s legal and regulatory framework ensures that ownership, accounting and banking information is available. However Kenya should ensure that full ownerships information is also available in the cases of trusts and nominees. These obligations are monitored by the KRA and the regulators who have a comprehensive system of oversight in place. However, due to a lack of oversight by the Registrars over the review period this may not cover the monitoring of the legal requirements by all entities. Kenya has sufficient access powers under the Income Tax Act and the right balance has been struck between rights and safeguards and accessing information. Having recently joined the Multilateral Convention, Kenya’s network of information exchange mechanisms covers 90 jurisdictions including all relevant partners. Due to issues with its postal service and organisational issues in the handling of the EOI process, out of six requests, Kenya only successfully received one EOI request over the review period. Although Kenya provided the requested information, there were long delays in its provision and status updates were not provided. Therefore, Kenya is recommended to monitor the implementation of its organisational process for EOI and to provide status updates where required. For further information on Kenya’s exchange of information practices and to read the full report click here.