Company tax on taxable profit at the 30% resident rate.
Corporate income tax
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Profit after tax
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Effective rate
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Where a company's profit tax begins
Corporate income tax in Kenya is charged on taxable profit, not on revenue and not on the figure at the bottom of your management accounts. Taxable profit is your accounting profit adjusted for tax rules: disallowed expenses added back, capital allowances claimed, and so on. This calculator starts from that adjusted profit. Feed it the number your tax computation produces, and it applies the flat company rate to give the tax due, the profit you keep, and the effective rate. For a profitable resident company the headline rate and the effective rate are the same flat figure, which makes the arithmetic refreshingly clean compared with the graduated personal scale.
Resident company or non-resident branch
The single switch that changes the bill here is who the taxpayer is. A resident company pays the standard rate, which this calculator applies at 30 percent. A non-resident company trading through a permanent establishment, in practice a branch, is taxed at the same 30 percent as modelled here, the old branch premium having been removed. Both rates have been revisited in recent Finance Acts, so treat them as the figures the tool uses and confirm the live rates with the Kenya Revenue Authority.
Two things this calculator deliberately does not do are worth stating plainly. It does not model the preferential rates the law grants to certain companies, such as newly listed companies or start-ups certified under the Nairobi International Financial Centre, which can pay materially less for a defined period. And it does not levy a minimum tax: the 1 percent turnover-based minimum tax was struck down by the courts and is not in force, so a loss-making company pays no corporate income tax under this tool. Those are points of law and context, not outputs the calculator computes.
Two companies, same profit, different residence
Picture two firms, each with a taxable profit of KES 5 million, the value the tool opens with. The resident company pays 30 percent, and the branch of a foreign company pays the same 30 percent, both on the rates this calculator applies. On these figures the bill is identical.
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The chart splits the taxable profit into corporate income tax paid and profit retained after tax.
A practical reminder: this tax is paid in advance through instalment tax during the year, with a balancing payment after the year-end, so the figure here is the full-year charge rather than a one-off cheque at filing. The most common error in using a tool like this is plugging in accounting profit straight from the income statement without the tax adjustments, which overstates or understates the base. Run your tax computation first, then enter the adjusted profit.
Do losses carry forward in Kenya?
Yes. A tax loss can generally be carried forward and set against future taxable profits, subject to the KRA's rules on the period and any restrictions in force. Because this calculator taxes only positive profit and applies no minimum tax, a year of losses produces zero corporate income tax here. In practice you would still file a return and carry the loss forward to relieve a later year. Confirm the current carry-forward limits with the KRA.
Is corporate tax separate from VAT and PAYE?
Completely. Corporate income tax is a charge on the company's profit. VAT is a tax on sales that the company collects and remits, and PAYE is deducted from employees' pay. They are different taxes with different returns and deadlines, and a company commonly deals with all three. This calculator addresses only the profit tax, so budget for VAT and payroll obligations separately.