Land Rates Calculator

Land rates are a county tax, not a national one

Unlike PAYE, stamp duty, or capital gains tax, Kenya has no single national land rates table. Each of the 47 county governments sets its own annual rate through its own Finance Act, applied to a property's land or site value. The figure that applies to a given plot depends on the county, and often the specific zone or land-use category within it — which is why no verified, universally applicable rate exists for this calculator to default to.

In practice, land rates are billed annually against the property, and unpaid balances can accumulate as arrears with penalties attached — county governments generally require a rates clearance certificate before a property transfer can be registered. Because the rate itself is set locally and changes with each county's own Finance Act, the only reliable source for your actual figure is your county's current Finance Act or an actual rates demand notice for your property.

Land rates vs. stamp duty

Stamp duty rate source: Stamp Duty Act (Cap 480); EY Global Tax Alert, 10 April 2024, as of 21 July 2026.

Worked example

The calculator opens with a KES 8,000,000 property value and an example rate of 0.1% — a starting point to edit, not a typical or verified county figure. At that rate, the arithmetic is simply KES 8,000,000 × 0.1%, giving annual land rates of KES 8,000. Replace 0.1% with your own county's actual rate from its Finance Act or your rates demand notice, and the figure will change accordingly.

For scale, compare that to stamp duty on the same KES 8,000,000 property if it changed hands: 4% in an urban area is KES 320,000, or 2% in a rural area is KES 160,000 — paid once, at transfer, rather than every year. The two taxes sit at very different points in a property's ownership: one recurring and locally set, the other one-time and set nationally.

Land rates fund county-level services — roads, water, waste collection, and local administration — which is part of why county assemblies revisit the rate in most annual Finance Act cycles rather than leaving it fixed for years. Some counties also periodically update the valuation roll used to assess a property's rateable value, separately from any change to the rate itself, so the same rate applied to an updated valuation can still change your bill year to year. Both the rate and the valuation are worth checking against your latest demand notice, not assumed to carry over unchanged.