NCPWD Reporting and Tax Deductions Under Kenya’s Persons with Disabilities Act, 2025: A Compliance Guide for Employers

Alongside the employment quota and reasonable accommodation duty in Kenya’s Persons with Disabilities Act, 2025, the Act creates two things employers should not overlook: a mandatory annual report to the National Council for Persons with Disabilities, and a set of tax deductions worth claiming if an employer already employs, or is accommodating, staff with disabilities. Both took effect with the rest of the Act on 27 May 2025. As of this writing, however, the Council has not published the prescribed report format or a specific claims procedure, which leaves employers with a live statutory duty and an available tax benefit, but no official form to use for either one yet.

The Annual Reporting Duty, and Why the Format Is Still Open

Section 21(3) of the Act states plainly that “every employer shall submit an annual report on the status of employment of persons with disabilities within their establishments to the Council in a format as may be prescribed.” The obligation itself is not conditional on the twenty-employee quota threshold in section 21(2)(a); read on its own terms, “every employer” is the operative phrase. What section 21(3) leaves to secondary rulemaking is the format of that report, and neither the Act’s text nor the National Council for Persons with Disabilities’ own published materials, including the Council’s own review commentary on the Act, currently specify what that format is or set a filing deadline. An employer acting in good faith right now has little to go on beyond keeping accurate internal records of how many persons with disabilities it employs, in what roles, and what accommodations it has made, so that whatever report format eventually appears can be populated without a scramble.

The Two Tax Deductions Under Section 23

Section 23(1) entitles “a private employer who engages a person with a disability either as a regular employee, apprentice or learner” to “a deduction from its taxable income equivalent to twenty-five percent of the total amount paid as salary and wages to such employee.” Section 23(2) provides a separate deduction, “equivalent to fifty percent of the direct costs,” for an employer that “improves or modifies its physical facilities or avails special services in order to provide reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities.” These are not alternatives to each other: an employer that both employs a person with a disability and modifies its premises to accommodate them can, on the text, claim both deductions in the same tax period, one measured against that employee’s salary and wages, the other against the accommodation spend itself.

The Certification Condition Attached to the Salary Deduction

Section 23(1)’s proviso is a precondition, not a formality: the employer “shall present proof certified by the Council of the person in respect of whom it claims the deduction and the person with disabilities so employed is accredited with the Council as to disabilities, skills and qualifications.” In practice this means the deduction is only available for an employee who already holds, or obtains, Council certification of their disability status, a process the Council has long operated separately from this Act through disability registration, including a self-registration channel on eCitizen. An employer intending to claim the section 23(1) deduction should confirm that the employee’s Council certification and accreditation are current and on file before the return is filed, rather than treating the deduction as available for any employee an employer subjectively regards as having a disability.

The Broader Accommodation-Expense Deduction Under Section 60

Section 60 sits apart from section 23 and is not limited to “private employers”: it applies to “any person who employs a person with disability” and covers reasonable accommodation costs, workplace modifications, and “mobility aids, assistive devices, adaptive technology or other devices or equipment, including computer software and computerized systems designed to meet the requirements of the employee with disability.” This deduction is computed in the ordinary course of income tax computation rather than through a separate Council-certified claims process comparable to section 23(1), though the underlying employment relationship with a person with a disability would still need to be demonstrable. Employers investing in accessibility software, adjustable workstations, or assistive equipment for a specific employee should keep the same kind of documentation they would for any other deductible business expense: invoices, the business purpose, and the employee for whom the expense was incurred.

What This Means for Employers Now

The practical position as of September 2026 is that the reporting duty in section 21(3) is legally live but administratively unformed, and the tax deductions in sections 23 and 60 are available in principle but require Council certification that employers should not assume is automatic or instant to obtain. Employers should not wait for a reporting form to appear before beginning to track the data section 21(3) will eventually require, and should not delay verifying an employee’s Council certification status if a section 23(1) deduction is being planned for the current tax year. Employers should also watch for subsidiary legislation or Council guidance that gives section 21(3) a concrete format and deadline, since the underlying duty to report does not disappear merely because the mechanics have not yet been published.