Reconcile rent WHT deducted by agents against the 7.5% rental income tax due.
Balance due or refund
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MRI tax due (7.5%)
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WHT credit
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Two numbers that rarely match
When a managing agent collects your rent, the law obliges them to hold back a portion and remit it to the Kenya Revenue Authority on your behalf before they pass the rest to you. That deduction is withholding tax. The figure they withhold and the figure you actually owe are set by two different rules, so they almost never line up. The agent withholds at one rate. Your real liability is the Monthly Rental Income charge at another. This page reconciles the two and tells you whether you have overpaid or still owe.
The rate this calculator uses for the agent deduction is 10 percent of resident rent, while the rental income tax due is modelled at 7.5 percent. Both percentages have moved with recent Finance Acts, so treat them as the figures applied here and confirm the current withholding and rental rates with the KRA. What does not change is the relationship: withholding is a prepayment, not a separate tax, and it is credited against the tax you eventually compute on your return.
Why withholding is a credit, not a cost
This is the idea that trips people up. The 10 percent the agent takes is not money lost to a different tax. It is your own rental tax, paid early through the agent instead of by you at filing time. On your return you work out the 7.5 percent due, then subtract everything already withheld as a credit. If the credit is smaller than the tax, you top up the difference. If the credit is larger, the surplus is not forfeited: it becomes refundable or carries forward against future rental tax. Because the withholding rate sits above the MRI rate, a landlord whose rent is fully managed by an agent will frequently end the year with a credit to recover rather than a balance to pay.
A landlord who comes out ahead
Picture a landlord with KES 1,200,000 of annual rent, all of it collected through an agent who withheld 10 percent over the year, so KES 120,000 reached the KRA before filing. At return time the rental tax is computed at the rate this calculator applies.
| Step | Working | KES |
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The withholding overshot the tax by KES 30,000, so rather than paying anything at filing the landlord has a refund or carry-forward of that amount. The chart sets the prepaid credit against the smaller tax actually due.
When the headline reads "see note" instead
The tool only reconciles cleanly while your rent sits inside the MRI band. Below KES 288,000 a year the rent is outside MRI, so there is no 7.5 percent charge to set the credit against and the whole withholding becomes recoverable. Above KES 15 million your rent leaves MRI for normal income tax, and reconciling a 7.5 percent figure there would be wrong, so the calculator deliberately shows "see note" rather than a misleading refund. In that high-rent case you reconcile the withholding against your normal income tax computation instead, where expenses also reduce the bill.
A practical tip: keep every withholding certificate your agent issues, because the credit is only as good as the proof you can produce. The KRA matches your claimed credit against what agents actually remitted under your PIN, and a missing certificate is the usual reason a refund stalls. If you manage some units yourself and an agent handles others, only the agent-collected rent carries withholding, so enter the withholding figure that genuinely reached the KRA rather than 10 percent of all your rent. Because the rates here have changed before, confirm the current withholding and MRI positions with the KRA before you rely on a refund.
How do I actually claim the surplus withholding back?
You claim it on your annual rental income return, where the withholding shows as a credit against the tax computed. A surplus is then either refunded by the KRA or carried forward to offset future rental tax, depending on what you elect. Refunds depend on the withholding agents having declared the deductions under your PIN, so reconcile your certificates against the iTax ledger before filing.
Does this tool include SHIF, PAYE or any other deductions?
No. This is purely a rental tax reconciliation: rental income tax due against rent withholding suffered. It does not touch SHIF, PAYE, NSSF or the Housing Levy, which are payroll deductions on employment income and unrelated to how your rent is taxed. If you are both employed and a landlord, those two streams are computed separately.