Kenya Stamp Duty Calculator

Background.

On a KSh 8 million house, stamp duty at 4% comes to KSh 320,000, and it has to be found in cash on top of the deposit before the transfer can be registered. Buyers who budget carefully for the purchase price and the advocate's fees are regularly caught out by it, partly because it is assessed late in the process and partly because the value it is charged on may not be the price they agreed.

Stamp duty in Kenya is a tax on documents rather than on people. The Stamp Duty Act (Cap. 480) charges it on legal instruments — transfers of land, leases, charges securing loans, share transfers and others — and KRA is the collector under section 2 of the Act. For a transfer of property the duty is ad valorem: a percentage of the property's value. Which percentage depends on the instrument and on where the property is, so the rate here is a field you set yourself. It starts at 4%.

The value is the other half of the sum, and the one buyers control least. The figure in the sale agreement is your starting point, but the Collector can have the property valued by a government valuer and assess duty on that open-market figure instead. If a plot bought for KSh 8 million is valued at KSh 9.5 million, the duty at 4% rises from KSh 320,000 to KSh 380,000.

Some transfers carry no ad valorem duty at all. KRA lists transfers of property between spouses, gifts of land to charitable organisations, and the passing of family property to members after the death of the registered owner among the exemptions, and first-time home owners buying under the affordable housing scheme have their own exemption. When you confirm one applies, the percentage duty drops to zero while any fixed fees you have entered stay in the total.

What is kenya stamp duty calculator?

Ad valorem stamp duty is a tax charged on a written instrument as a percentage of the value it transfers. For a conveyance of land or a house, that value is the consideration or the market value the Collector accepts after valuation, and the duty is normally the buyer's cost unless the sale agreement allocates it differently. The instrument must be stamped — the duty assessed and paid — before the Lands registry will register it, and KRA warns that an unstamped instrument is inadmissible as evidence in a Kenyan court. In a typical purchase the transfer is signed, lodged for valuation and assessment, and the duty is then paid on iTax against the bill reference number the assessment produces. Duty on a locally prepared instrument is due within 30 days after assessment; for documents executed abroad and sent for registration in Kenya, within 30 days of receiving them. Stamp duty is separate from capital gains tax, which falls on the seller, and from county land rates, which owners pay every year.

How to use this calculator.

1. 01Enter the chargeable value in shillings. Start with the purchase price in the sale agreement; once the government valuation is known, replace it with the assessed value if that is higher. A sale to a relative at a token price does not escape this, since the duty can be assessed on the valued market figure rather than the price written down.
2. 02Enter the stamp duty rate for your instrument and the property's location. The field starts at 4%; your advocate or the Lands office assessment will confirm the rate that applies to your transfer.
3. 03Choose 'Exemption confirmed' only when you have confirmation that the transfer is exempt, for example a transfer between spouses. That sets the percentage duty to zero and leaves fixed fees in place.
4. 04Use the additional fixed duty or fees field for any flat amounts you want carried into the total: a fixed duty on another instrument, or the registration, valuation or search fees you have been quoted.
5. 05If part of the money has already been paid, enter it under payment already made to see the balance still owed.

The formula.

The calculation is Duty = V × r, where V is the chargeable value in Kenya shillings and r is the rate converted from a percentage, 4 ÷ 100 = 0.04 at the default. Every million shillings of value therefore adds KSh 40,000 of duty at 4%, and the relationship is strictly proportional: double the value or the rate and the duty doubles. The same proportionality carries any error in V straight through: a valuation 10% above your price raises the duty by exactly 10%, which is why the value deserves more checking than the arithmetic. When the exemption option is set to 'yes', Duty is set to zero regardless of V and r.

Fixed amounts are added after the percentage: Total = Duty + Fees. Keeping them apart from the duty matters because the stamp duty line is the figure an official assessment will be compared with, while the fees are whatever else you chose to budget for. The balance is then Balance = Total − Paid, shown as zero if you have already paid more than the total; the calculator does not work out refunds.

The model is deliberately narrow. It applies one rate to one value, which matches a straightforward transfer of a single property. It does not choose the rate from the type of instrument or the location, value the property, test whether an exemption is valid, or work out instruments whose duty is set on a different basis, such as leases, where the term and rent matter. For those, find the duty that applies, then enter it as a rate on the right value or as a fixed amount. The figure it produces is a budget, not an assessment: the amount you actually pay is the one assessed through the official process.

A worked example.

Frequently asked questions.

References& sources.

1. [1]Kenya Law (2025). "Stamp Duty Act, Cap. 480." National Council for Law Reporting.
2. [2]Kenya Law (2025). "Stamp Duty Act, Cap. 480 PDF." National Council for Law Reporting.
3. [3]Kenya Revenue Authority (n.d.). "Stamp Duty." KRA.
4. [4]Kenya Revenue Authority (n.d.). "FAQs." KRA.
5. [5]Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (2019). "The International System of Units (SI Brochure), 9th edition." BIPM.