diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.1.0.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.1.0.rst
index 88bf0e005a221..f320ad97d3dfa 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.1.0.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.1.0.rst
@@ -394,6 +394,8 @@ Backwards incompatible API changes
 - :meth:`Series.to_timestamp` now raises a ``TypeError`` if the axis is not a :class:`PeriodIndex`. Previously an ``AttributeError`` was raised (:issue:`33327`)
 - :meth:`Series.to_period` now raises a ``TypeError`` if the axis is not a :class:`DatetimeIndex`. Previously an ``AttributeError`` was raised (:issue:`33327`)
 - :func: `pandas.api.dtypes.is_string_dtype` no longer incorrectly identifies categorical series as string.
+- :func:`read_excel` no longer takes ``**kwds`` arguments. This means that passing in keyword ``chunksize`` now raises a ``TypeError``
+  (previously raised a ``NotImplementedError``), while passing in keyword ``encoding`` now raises a ``TypeError`` (:issue:`34464`)
 
 ``MultiIndex.get_indexer`` interprets `method` argument differently
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
diff --git a/pandas/io/excel/_base.py b/pandas/io/excel/_base.py
index d55bdffe689f2..12019c7477fe0 100644
--- a/pandas/io/excel/_base.py
+++ b/pandas/io/excel/_base.py
@@ -193,8 +193,6 @@
     Duplicate columns will be specified as 'X', 'X.1', ...'X.N', rather than
     'X'...'X'. Passing in False will cause data to be overwritten if there
     are duplicate names in the columns.
-**kwds : optional
-        Optional keyword arguments can be passed to ``TextFileReader``.
 
 Returns
 -------
@@ -285,6 +283,7 @@ def read_excel(
     nrows=None,
     na_values=None,
     keep_default_na=True,
+    na_filter=True,
     verbose=False,
     parse_dates=False,
     date_parser=None,
@@ -293,13 +292,8 @@ def read_excel(
     skipfooter=0,
     convert_float=True,
     mangle_dupe_cols=True,
-    **kwds,
 ):
 
-    for arg in ("sheet", "sheetname", "parse_cols"):
-        if arg in kwds:
-            raise TypeError(f"read_excel() got an unexpected keyword argument `{arg}`")
-
     if not isinstance(io, ExcelFile):
         io = ExcelFile(io, engine=engine)
     elif engine and engine != io.engine:
@@ -323,6 +317,7 @@ def read_excel(
         nrows=nrows,
         na_values=na_values,
         keep_default_na=keep_default_na,
+        na_filter=na_filter,
         verbose=verbose,
         parse_dates=parse_dates,
         date_parser=date_parser,
@@ -331,7 +326,6 @@ def read_excel(
         skipfooter=skipfooter,
         convert_float=convert_float,
         mangle_dupe_cols=mangle_dupe_cols,
-        **kwds,
     )
 
 
@@ -861,11 +855,6 @@ def parse(
         DataFrame or dict of DataFrames
             DataFrame from the passed in Excel file.
         """
-        if "chunksize" in kwds:
-            raise NotImplementedError(
-                "chunksize keyword of read_excel is not implemented"
-            )
-
         return self._reader.parse(
             sheet_name=sheet_name,
             header=header,
diff --git a/pandas/tests/io/excel/test_readers.py b/pandas/tests/io/excel/test_readers.py
index fd1533dd65dc4..109da630f76a2 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/io/excel/test_readers.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/io/excel/test_readers.py
@@ -897,12 +897,6 @@ def test_read_excel_bool_header_arg(self, read_ext):
             with pytest.raises(TypeError, match=msg):
                 pd.read_excel("test1" + read_ext, header=arg)
 
-    def test_read_excel_chunksize(self, read_ext):
-        # GH 8011
-        msg = "chunksize keyword of read_excel is not implemented"
-        with pytest.raises(NotImplementedError, match=msg):
-            pd.read_excel("test1" + read_ext, chunksize=100)
-
     def test_read_excel_skiprows_list(self, read_ext):
         # GH 4903
         if pd.read_excel.keywords["engine"] == "pyxlsb":
@@ -1048,17 +1042,6 @@ def test_excel_passes_na_filter(self, read_ext, na_filter):
         expected = DataFrame(expected, columns=["Test"])
         tm.assert_frame_equal(parsed, expected)
 
-    @pytest.mark.parametrize("arg", ["sheet", "sheetname", "parse_cols"])
-    @td.check_file_leaks
-    def test_unexpected_kwargs_raises(self, read_ext, arg):
-        # gh-17964
-        kwarg = {arg: "Sheet1"}
-        msg = fr"unexpected keyword argument `{arg}`"
-
-        with pd.ExcelFile("test1" + read_ext) as excel:
-            with pytest.raises(TypeError, match=msg):
-                pd.read_excel(excel, **kwarg)
-
     def test_excel_table_sheet_by_index(self, read_ext, df_ref):
         # For some reason pd.read_excel has no attribute 'keywords' here.
         # Skipping based on read_ext instead.
diff --git a/pandas/tests/io/excel/test_writers.py b/pandas/tests/io/excel/test_writers.py
index b909f1f3a958f..ba759c7766fa5 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/io/excel/test_writers.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/io/excel/test_writers.py
@@ -836,9 +836,7 @@ def test_to_excel_output_encoding(self, ext):
 
         with tm.ensure_clean("__tmp_to_excel_float_format__." + ext) as filename:
             df.to_excel(filename, sheet_name="TestSheet", encoding="utf8")
-            result = pd.read_excel(
-                filename, sheet_name="TestSheet", encoding="utf8", index_col=0
-            )
+            result = pd.read_excel(filename, sheet_name="TestSheet", index_col=0)
             tm.assert_frame_equal(result, df)
 
     def test_to_excel_unicode_filename(self, ext, path):