Government and Policy

The law is already there. Where is the relief?

BY Steve Biko Wafula · August 3, 2026 10:08 am

Kenya must end the regulatory delay blocking tax relief for parents and guardians caring for persons with severe disabilities

Parliament enacted a specific tax-relief pathway for a parent or guardian caring for a person certified with severe disability who cannot meet their own basic needs. The Act commenced on 27 May 2025. Yet, more than fourteen months later, a review of official legal and government sources does not reveal the regulations needed to prescribe and operationalise that relief. The result is a right written in statute but still difficult, if not impossible, for qualifying families to use.

This is not a minor administrative inconvenience. For families providing full-time or near-full-time care to children and adults with profound support needs, every month of delay has a real cost: therapy, medication, transport, assistive devices, specialist consultations, special education, home modifications, paid caregiving, lost working hours and, in many households, the sacrifice of one parent’s earning capacity altogether.

The Kenyan State recognised that burden and enacted relief. It cannot then allow the benefit to remain trapped between an Act of Parliament and an unsigned or ungazetted set of regulations. A government that can collect tax immediately must also be capable of implementing tax relief promptly when Parliament has deliberately provided it.

The legal position is clear: Parliament created the relief

The Persons with Disabilities Act, No. 4 of 2025, was assented to on 8 May 2025, published on 13 May 2025 and commenced on 27 May 2025. It replaced the 2003 Act and expressly created a new statutory framework for disability rights, incentives and reliefs.

Section 57(1) is the key provision. It authorises the Cabinet Secretary responsible for finance, upon application, to grant an income-tax exemption to a parent or guardian of a person certified with severe disability and incapable of catering for their basic needs, where that person is in the parent’s or guardian’s care and custody. The amount is to be prescribed by the Cabinet Secretary.

Most importantly, section 57(3) does not merely offer a polite suggestion. It states that the Cabinet Secretary “shall make regulations” for the proper implementation of the section. In statutory drafting, “shall” ordinarily signals a mandatory duty unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. The benefit cannot be meaningfully accessed until the machinery of implementation exists: the prescribed amount, application forms, certification standards, evidence of care and custody, decision timelines, renewal rules, review or appeal mechanisms, and coordination among Treasury, NCPWD and KRA.

Section 56(7) reinforces the point by directing the Cabinet Secretary responsible for finance, in consultation with the National Council for Persons with Disabilities, to make regulations to give effect to the broader exemption provisions. The statute therefore anticipates active regulation and inter-agency coordination, not indefinite administrative silence.

What the official record shows as at 2 August 2026

A review of Kenya Law’s current legislation database, the Kenya Revenue Authority’s public guidance and NCPWD’s official materials shows an uncomfortable implementation gap. The old Persons with Disabilities (Income Tax Deductions and Exemptions) Order, Legal Notice No. 36 of 2010, remains the latest readily identifiable income-tax exemption instrument. Under section 89 of the 2025 Act, existing regulations can continue in force during the transition.

But the 2010 Order was designed for tax exemption claimed by the person with disability. It does not create the new parent-or-guardian relief introduced by section 57 of the 2025 Act. KRA’s current public guidance still explains the existing exemption for a registered person with disability on the first KSh 150,000 of monthly income, relying on the old 2003 Act and the 2010 Order. That guidance does not set out a functioning parent/guardian application pathway under the 2025 Act.

This distinction matters. It would be inaccurate to say that all disability tax exemptions have stopped: the pre-existing exemption system for qualifying persons with disabilities continues. The problem is narrower but extremely serious: the new statutory relief for qualifying parents and guardians appears not to have been operationalised through the regul