The short answer
If your connection is genuinely unreliable, this is a condition to design around rather than an incident to resolve. What the business does during an outage is the question worth answering.
What this usually means
Our reading, not a rule. Nothing below is a statement of what KRA requires.
For a business that trades through connectivity it cannot rely on, this is not an incident to resolve but a condition to design around. The question worth answering is not why it dropped but what the business does while it is down.
What to suspect first
Our reading, not a rule. Nothing below is a statement of what KRA requires.
- Ordinary connectivity at the premises, which in much of Kenya is variable rather than absent
- A shared connection under load at exactly the busiest trading hours
- A channel that assumes a live connection being used somewhere that cannot provide one
- Mobile data specifically, which can fail while voice and USSD keep working
What you can check yourself
Our reading, not a rule. Nothing below is a statement of what KRA requires.
- Establish whether the drops follow a pattern: time of day, weather, a particular device.
- Check whether anything else on the same connection is affected, which separates the connection from the software.
- Work out what the business actually does during an outage, and whether that plan exists or is improvised each time.
- If connectivity is genuinely unreliable, treat what your channel does offline as the deciding feature when choosing one, rather than as a detail.
When to stop and contact KRA. A business that cannot sell during an outage has a worse problem than a compliance one. That is a channel choice and an operational decision, and it is worth making deliberately rather than discovering it mid-queue.
What the rules say
Tax rules in Kenya change with each Finance Act and with regulations made during the year. Before acting on any figure, deadline or threshold, check the current position on KRA's own website.
This page explains how a requirement generally works. It is not tax advice, and it cannot account for the specifics of any one business. For a position you intend to rely on, confirm with KRA directly or with a registered tax agent.
Common questions
What do I do when eTIMS loses connection?
If your connection is genuinely unreliable, this is a condition to design around rather than an incident to resolve. What the business does during an outage is the question worth answering.
What should I check first when etims keeps losing connection?
Establish whether the drops follow a pattern: time of day, weather, a particular device.
Can you tell me the exact steps to fix it?
Not for anything inside KRA's own software, no. We do not publish click-paths through screens we have not seen documented, because a confident wrong instruction sends you to fix the wrong thing while you are already stuck. What we can do is narrow the cause and tell you when to contact KRA.
How do I know this information is current?
Tax rules in Kenya change with each Finance Act and with regulations made during the year. Before acting on any figure, deadline or threshold, check the current position on KRA's own website.
Related problems
Sources
- officialeTIMS (Electronic Tax Invoice Management System) — Kenya Revenue Authority, checked 2026-09-18
- officialeTIMS taxpayer portal — Kenya Revenue Authority, checked 2026-09-18
- officialKenya Revenue Authority — Kenya Revenue Authority, checked 2026-09-18