Kenya crypto tax in 2026: what is enacted, and what is still only proposed
Start by separating the Act from the Bill
Kenyan tax changes are announced twice: once when a Finance Bill is published and again, in different form, when the Act is assented. A great deal of the crypto tax commentary circulating in 2026 quotes Bill figures. Before you cost anything into a licensing budget, establish whether the number in front of you survived into the Act — and whether the section it sits in has actually commenced.
A note on sourcing for this article. Where a figure is quoted from an official Kenya Revenue Authority notice, we say so. Where it comes from professional reporting on the legislation rather than from the statute text, we say that too. The text of the Finance Act, 2026 was not directly readable to us at the time of writing, so anything attributed to it below should be confirmed against the Act itself before you rely on it.
What is in force: excise duty on VASP fees
Kenya taxes the intermediary’s fee, not the transaction. The Kenya Revenue Authority’s public notice on excisable services introduced by the Finance Act, 2025 describes a single new excisable service: fees charged on virtual assets transactions by virtual asset providers, at a rate of 10% of the excisable value, with effect from 1 July 2025. The same notice states that suppliers of excisable services remit to the Commissioner on or before the 20th of the month following collection.
That is a materially different tax from what came before it. Reporting on the change — including analysis published by Deloitte in Kenya — describes the Finance Act, 2023 as having imposed a 3% digital asset tax on transaction value, an approach criticised for operating as a charge on gross value rather than on income, and subsequently removed in favour of the excise duty on fees. If your model still carries a 3% line against transaction volume, that is the point to re-check against the current text of the Income Tax Act.
Two practical consequences follow from taxing fees rather than turnover:
- The charge attaches to the fee component of each transaction, so your billing and ledger design has to identify that component at transaction level rather than derive it later from aggregate revenue.
- It is a monthly remittance obligation with a fixed date, which means it belongs in your finance operating model from day one of licensed operation, not in the year-end cycle.
What the Finance Act, 2026 is reported to add
Professional reporting on the Finance Act, 2026 — which EY records as having been assented on 23 June 2026, with provisions generally effective 1 July 2026 unless otherwise stated — describes two additions that matter to a licensed virtual asset business:
- An obligation on virtual asset service providers to file annual information returns with the KRA, amending the Tax Procedures Act, with an offence for failing to file or for filing falsified returns.
- Enabling provisions for agreements with other jurisdictions for automatic exchange of information relating to virtual asset transactions.
We have not verified the section numbers behind either item against the Act, and we do not quote a section number we have not read. If you are drafting a tax compliance calendar, take the section references from the Act rather than from any summary, including this one.
The tax perimeter is not the licensing perimeter
This is the gap most likely to cause a dispute later. The Deloitte analysis referred to above makes the point that the Excise Duty Act does not itself define “virtual asset” or “virtual asset service provider”, which leaves open which entities and which instruments the 10% actually reaches.
Meanwhile the licensing side is now defined in detail. The Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, 2025 (Act No. 20 of 2025) and the Virtual Asset Service Providers Regulations, 2026 (Legal Notice No. 134 of 2026, published 22 July 2026) set out ten activity categories, split between the Central Bank of Kenya and the Capital Markets Authority. A firm can therefore be squarely inside the licensing perimeter and still face a real question about whether a particular receipt is an excisable fee — and, less comfortably, the reverse.
The working assumption we would take into a licensing budget is that if you are charging an identifiable fee for a virtual asset service to a Kenyan customer, you should plan for the excise duty to apply and take advice on the edge cases, rather than plan for it not to apply and be corrected.
Do not cost a licence against a tax proposal
Licensing costs and tax costs come from different instruments and move on different timetables. The application and licence fees for each category sit in the First Schedule to Legal Notice 134; they are fixed figures in a gazetted instrument. Tax rates sit in the Excise Duty Act and the Income Tax Act as amended annually, and a Finance Bill proposal is not a rate. When you build the two-year cost picture for a Kenyan licence, keep the gazetted fees and the enacted taxes in one column and anything drawn from a Bill, a Treasury draft or a press summary in another — clearly labelled, and not added to the total.
The checklist behind this article
The Kenya VASP Readiness Checklist covers the application file rather than the tax return: every item cited to a regulation or schedule in Legal Notice 134, every figure marked as instrument text or as reporting of it, and the points the regulations leave open — including the application window itself — marked as open rather than guessed. USD 79, with updated editions free as the position develops.
If you know your category and simply need the document list, the checklist is enough on its own. If you are running more than one activity, or you cannot yet tell whether a receipt of yours is an excisable fee, the 48-hour gap check takes your actual fee structure and tells you where the questions are.