Getting Started with DigiTax in Kenya

What is DigiTax?

DigiTax is the leading KRA-licenced & ODPC-approved eTIMS solutions provider authorized to provide tax
compliance software.

KRA stands for Kenya Revenue Authority
ODPC stands for Office of the Data Protection Commissioner

DigiTax is registered as a Data Controller and is in the process of acquiring a Data Processor license with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner.

DigiTax Platform, powered by Namiri Technologies Ltd, is a suite of solutions:

• DigiTax App (Mobile PWA),
• DigiTax Dashboard (Web Browser-based Desktop application) and
• DigiTax API

The first two are powered by the DigiTax API 🎉

History of Tax in Kenya

KRA, Kenya Revenue Authority, is an agency of the government of Kenya that is responsible for the assessment, collection and accounting for all revenues that are due to the government in accordance with the laws of Kenya.

One type of tax is the VAT (Value-Added Tax), which is filed monthly by eligible taxpayers. Systems concerning this tax type have evolved over the years. It's up until recently that non-VAT tax payers were included with the introduction of eTIMS. More on that below. Let's go chronologically.

In 2005, the ETR (Electronic Tax Register) was launched. Later, on 1st August 2021, TIMS (Tax Invoice Management System) was rolled out. This upgraded version of the ETR system required all VAT-registered taxpayers to upgrade their ETR machines to comply with the Value Added Tax (Electronic Tax Invoice) Regulations, 2020.

There have been three iterations of the TIMS devices: Type A, B and C.

eTIMS

More recently, KRA launched eTIMS (Electronic TIMS). eTIMS is here to help more taxpayers become compliant (no need of having ETR devices).

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eTIMS is software based while TIMS was device-based

Once on-boarded to eTIMS, you get to leverage the technological convenience this software solution provides.

Enter DigiTax

DigiTax is your digital solution for effective, simple and painless eTIMS tax compliance. Our suite of software products enable businesses to transmit eTIMS invoices directly to tax authorities in real-time.

DigiTax is a solution that sits between you, a taxpayer, and KRA's eTIMS system.

Instead of onboarding directly onto eTIMS, a process that requires significant resource investment, both time and technical resources, we do the heavy lifting for you - Making tax compliance less taxing.

Here, at the DigiTax API hub, we cover guides, recipes and API reference to get you ready to integrate with the DigiTax API. Consider reviewing the digitax.tech webpage for more on the DigiTax Dashboard and DigiTax app.

What can DigiTax help me with?

Our DigiTax Dashboard and DigiTax app use the DigiTax API in the background. The API is designed to optimize eTIMS invoicing, tracking purchases and inventory management among other eTIMS functionalities in the following ways:

• Asynchronous functionality that automatically retries eTIMS (or any other tax agency system).
  This mitigates against duplication of invoices and associated tax obligations
• Guarantee that the same invoice won't be submitted more than once
• Recording of purchases in addition to sales to ensure all eTIMS-related data is accessible in a single place
• Throttling between your business' throughput and eTIMS.
  A business only needs to send an invoice once, and DigiTax will process the information thereafter based on eTIMS capacity at that particular point in time
• Real-time notifications
• Priority support
• Simple integration.
  We’ve streamlined integration reducing the work required by 70%. To start with you can interact with the API endpoints here
• Code samples in 19 different integration programming languages to choose from when using the interactive API reference. This reduces the likelihood of errors during the development workflow
• 99.99% uptime
• Queuing and scaling (allowing us to support any amount of volume)
• Get notifications on transaction statuses via Callback URLs
• Intuitive DigiTax dashboard for you and your stakeholders
  It serves for redundancy and e-invoicing

Guaranteed safety and integrity

We comply with best industry and security practices.

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DigiTax is built with the best industry practices and to the highest security standards

Overall

The DigiTax App and Dashboard users securely sign up and log in via social media credentials (Google and Microsoft) or email address, one-time pin/password, and secure email links.

The dashboard is where you sign up and set up profiles and businesses outrightly as a product user or before integration.

All activity is logged for audit trail and compliance checks and all information is encrypted and transmitted for
maximum protection

API

The API is built with various industry standards for API platforms in mind, but some of the most common ones include:

1. RESTful API
2. OpenAPI (formerly Swagger): An open-source standard that allows a standardised way to generate, document, and test our APIs.
3. Secure authentication with cryptographically signed JWTs (JSON Web Tokens)