Fuel, Rent, Electricity, Internet: Which Business Expenses Actually Need an eTIMS Receipt?

Why This Page Exists

Every week, business owners in Kenya ask the same questions — in WhatsApp groups, business forums, and over the counter:

• "I bought fuel for the delivery vehicle — is a till receipt from the pump enough?"
• "Can I claim my Safaricom internet as a business expense?"
• "The landlord won't give me any receipt — can I still claim rent?"
• "I pay KPLC tokens for the office — where's my eTIMS receipt?"
• "Do I need an eTIMS receipt for every single expense?"

These are good questions, and most of the answers are shorter than you think. Here they are, one by one.

Why it matters this month: KRA now cross-checks declared expenses against eTIMS at filing time — a receipt that never reached the system gets rejected, and your taxable profit grows by the unproven amount. The receipts you collect today decide the return you file this year.

Fuel — Can You Claim It Without an eTIMS Receipt?

Fuel is the classic case. If the vehicle is registered in the business's name, fuel for it is a genuine business expense — you claim it with a fuel receipt that went through eTIMS and carries your business PIN.

What doesn't work: generic till/M-Pesa receipts without your PIN, handwritten dockets, or "fuel" lines listed with no receipt.

Practical moves:

• Ask for an eTIMS fuel receipt before you pay — the fuel module is mandatory for stations, and eTIMS receipts can be issued at the pump for both individual motorists and businesses. The deadline for station rollout was extended to 31 December 2025, and around 500 stations (about 16% of the country) were live by early 2026 — so a station that cannot yet issue an eTIMS receipt is a station mid-onboarding, not a business permanently exempt.
• If a station still can't issue one, keep the normal receipt plus a record (date, litres purchased, station, vehicle registration) in your books. Not perfect, but it is evidence.
• Ground rule: the vehicle must be registered to the business. A receipt for your personal car doesn't become the company's expense just because the business "used" it occasionally.

Safaricom Airtime and Internet — Can You Claim Them?

This is where owners get genuinely stuck — the mechanics exist, they're just new.

• Safaricom runs an official KRA compliance flow on its business portal (business.safaricom.co.ke/kra) — you submit your business KRA PIN once, and Safaricom's invoices for your account are then issued with it and transmitted to iTax in real time. Customer care can walk you through the documentation.
• In parallel, keep the payment records: M-Pesa statements, the account number, and any emailed invoice. If KRA validates later and your PIN is pending on a purchase, you at least have the audit trail built.

If you can't get the PIN on a specific token or airtime purchase, log it honestly and keep the payment proof.

KPLC Tokens and Electricity — Can You Claim Them?

Power is a large cost — and a gnarly one:

• Electricity billing is tied to the meter owner's registration — usually the landlord or the named account holder, not the person who buys tokens.
• KRA's datasets include Kenya Power account records — so the meter's registered name should match the business that pays for it. That match is exactly what makes a power expense traceable.
• If the meter is registered in your business name, the bills plus token purchase records are your evidence — claim it.
• If you buy tokens on someone else's meter (rented space, shared premises), the expense belongs to the meter owner, not the token payer. Don't "reverse-engineer" a fake receipt — fix it at setup instead: ask the owner to register the meter to you or issue you a tax invoice for the service.

Rent — Can You Claim It Without a Landlord Receipt?

• If your landlord is a VAT/eTIMS-aware taxpayer, they should issue monthly eTIMS rental invoices that include your PIN. Landlords increasingly do this — KRA has been moving the rental sector onto e-invoices precisely so tenants can claim rent as a business cost. Landlords earning between KES 288,000 and KES 15 million a year in rent sit in the Monthly Rental Income regime (7.5% on gross rent since January 2024), and that same landlord base is being onboarded onto eTIMS.
• If they refuse: ask in writing, keep every documented payment (M-Pesa reference, bank transfer), and hold that record. The claim without any invoice is risky — the ask-in-writing covers you in any audit conversation.

M-Pesa Till Receipts

M-Pesa till receipts are proof of payment, not tax invoices. The supplier's eTIMS invoice (with your PIN) is the claimable document; the M-Pesa receipt proves you actually paid. Keep both — they do different jobs.

The Onboarding Error Everyone Meets: "Wrong Obligation ID" / "NONVAT only"

During onboarding, many owners see an error like "wrong obligation ID" or "NONVAT only" when they try to create an invoice in iTax. It is the single most common eTIMS problem for new users.

What's happening: the tax obligations on your PIN and the eTIMS registration aren't in sync — for example, a NONVAT invoice type issued while no matching NONVAT obligation is active on the PIN.

The practical fix flow:

1. Log in to iTax → confirm your active obligations (VAT-registered? Income Tax – Business? TOT?)
2. Register the correct obligation and re-activate eTIMS under that PIN
3. Issue using the invoice type that matches the error you saw
4. If it persists, raise the ticket with your obligation ID — this resolves in 1–2 working days

We see this weekly — if you get stuck, send us a screenshot and we'll walk it through on WhatsApp.