It is said there is nothing new under the sun. Not even the electronic tax invoice management system (eTIMS), which has been a thorn in the backside of many Kenyans.
To George Omondi Obell, commissioner for the Micro and Small Taxpayers Department at the Kenya Revenue Authority, eTIMS – an internet-based invoicing system – is an idea he brought back from his tour of duty around the world. Before eTIMS was launched in Kenya, Mr Obell had watched in awe how the technology transformed tax compliance in developed countries.
He had to bring the technology home. For Mr Obell, eTIMS is just one ammunition in an arsenal of technology the commissioner has been deploying to net millions of hard-to-tax Kenyans, including those in the informal sector, who have largely escaped the taxman’s reach. Others are pre-populated tax returns, simplified mobile filing platforms, WhatsApp taxpayer support systems, as well as ‘UshuruGPT’, an internally developed artificial intelligence (AI) compliance assistant.
An old hand at the KRA, Mr Obell believes the road to expanding the tax base beyond the easy-to-tax categories such as individuals on payrolls and businesses with a physical presence is using technology to simplify the entire tax process.
He says that before he rose to his current position where he is tasked with bringing into the tax bracket, ‘even basic tax obligations remained unnecessarily difficult for small businesses.”
Like many tax collectors, Mr Obell comes from the school of thought that, often, people do not deliberately avoid paying taxes – which many consider a civic duty – but rather lack a conducive environment that enables compliance. While the philosophical import of that viewpoint is debatable, there is little doubt that taxation as a concept is often too complicated for an ordinary mama mboga.
He reckons that registration, filing and payment systems required taxpayers to navigate complex online portals often inaccessible to ordinary traders operating far from formal business centres. ‘The process of registration, the process of filing, the process of payment, they are all very complicated.’
When President William Ruto took office in September 2022, he made little secret of his intention to reshape Kenya’s tax administration, arguing that the country’s revenue collection system had become aggressive and counterproductive to expanding the tax base.
The President at the time signaled plans to reform tax administration and overhaul leadership at the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA).
‘A huge obstacle to the realisation of our national revenue target is that in practice, tax administration has traditionally been a repressive, menacing affair which resembles extortion,’ Dr Ruto said.
Two months later, in November, Mr Obell was appointed Commissioner for the Micro and Small Taxpayers Department (MST), a unit created earlier in March 2025 to enhance focus on the country’s vast informal and small-business tax base.
But it is Mr Obell’s role that has been pronounced. Recently, the internet went bonkers with reports that the KRA had visited the bustling Eastleigh area, a critical commercial district that is unfortunately associated with tax delinquency.
‘Many businesses across the country source goods from Eastleigh but face challenges in obtaining eTIMS invoices, which are critical for expense claims,’ Mr Obell wrote in a statement issued after holding a consultative meeting with the Eastleigh Business District Association.
‘We are going to ensure that traders are supported to register on eTIMS and issue receipts for all transactions, enhancing transparency and creating a level playing field.’
Obell has emerged as a key figure driving KRA’s transition from a paper-heavy bureaucracy into a data-driven institution built around real-time transaction monitoring and digital compliance systems.
He arrived at the tax body carrying lessons from global tax systems, inheriting the politically delicate assignment of bringing informal traders into the tax system without triggering widespread resistance from businesses already wary of KRA.
What confronted him was a familiar African problem – millions of businesses trading daily outside the reach of systems designed for salaried workers and formal companies.
His diagnosis was blunt. Kenya’s tax systems had remained heavily inward-looking even as commerce rapidly migrated towards smartphones, mobile money platforms and digital marketplaces that rarely fit traditional definitions of permanent business establishments.
‘Tax follows what is happening in the market,’ he says, capturing a philosophy that increasingly shapes KRA’s transition from a paper-heavy bureaucracy into a data-driven institution centered on real-time transactions and digital reporting.
Long before assuming his current office, Mr Obell had built a career around international taxation, cross-border commerce and transfer pricing, fields that exposed him to how multinational corporations structured transactions through complex technology ecosystems spanning multiple jurisdictions.
A lawyer, accountant and financial analyst by training, he spent years working with multinational firms whose operations depended almost entirely on automated systems, digital billing and transaction environments that traditional audit methods could barely penetrate.
‘You cannot for a moment begin asking for papers,’ he notes, describing how multinational tax enforcement increasingly requires administrators to understand software architecture and transaction flows.
Mr Obell’s rise within KRA coincides with mounting pressure on government to expand revenue collection without imposing politically explosive tax increases on already strained households and businesses facing slower economic growth and rising costs.
His international profile later expanded through appointments with the United Nations, where he served for five years as a tax expert tapped by the secretary-general to help shape discussions on global tax policy and developing-country revenue systems.
Mr Obell also worked with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on tax matters affecting developing economies, before chairing the African Tax Administration Forum’s working group on cross-border taxation.
These assignments, he notes, exposed him to electronic invoicing frameworks and real-time transaction monitoring systems already entrenched in parts of Latin America and Europe years before Kenya began implementing comparable digital tax infrastructure.
At KRA, Mr Obell concluded early that the Authority’s systems disproportionately served businesses already visible to government while leaving behind traders operating through informal channels.
The Authority’s response has involved shifting tax administration closer to environments where commercial activity already existed, including mobile phones, USSD platforms, payment systems and simplified applications designed for traders operating without sophisticated technology infrastructure.
KRA says more than 1.3 million taxpayers are now interacting with the simplified digital platforms, significantly exceeding the number using the traditional iTax portal that had long functioned as the Authority’s primary compliance gateway.
Much of the transformation revolves around the Electronic Tax Invoice Management System (eTIMS), which KRA increasingly frames as the backbone of future tax administration and transaction verification across the economy.
Obell says approximately 680,000 businesses have onboarded onto eTIMS, with nearly two-thirds joining through the simplified mobile-based systems.
Yet the transition has repeatedly collided with public suspicion and broader distrust surrounding KRA’s historical reputation as an aggressive enforcement agency rather than a service-oriented public institution.
Medical practitioners have, for instance, raised concerns about confidentiality and patient privacy after proposals requiring healthcare facilities to issue electronic invoices generated fears that sensitive treatment information could become accessible within government systems.
‘Resistance is normal. We have responded by introducing phased implementation schedules alongside alternative compliance tools, including buyer-initiated invoicing systems allowing purchasers to generate invoices on behalf of suppliers lacking smartphones or reliable internet access,’ Mr Obell says.
The Authority has simultaneously expanded direct taxpayer communication through WhatsApp notifications, automated reminders and pre-populated returns intended to reduce filing errors while nudging taxpayers towards voluntary compliance before enforcement measures become necessary.
One of the more ambitious projects under development is ‘UshuruGPT’, an internally built artificial intelligence chatbot designed to guide taxpayers through filing procedures and legal compliance requirements using conversational interfaces.
‘The broader objective extends beyond convenience into construction of a single point of truth, tracking invoices, payments, goods and stock movements nationally,’ says the commissioner.