The Kenya Revenue Authority, through its acting commissioner of micro and small taxpayers, George Obell, has revealed that the agency is seeking to adopt new measures in a crackdown on those who evade paying taxes, particularly targeting micro and small-scale businesses.
Speaking during an interview, the commissioner disclosed that the agency would set up a team that would target those in the industry who fail to comply in declaring their truthful returns and ensure tax compliance.
He noted that more strategies would be deployed to monitor transactions in the informal sector to ensure declaration of revenues, adding that though many members filed their personal identification numbers, they were filing nil returns despite being operational.
Efforts will be made in a bid to boost revenues and encourage the taxpayers to enhance compliance by fulfilling their tax obligations.
Obell added that the information sharing on assets such as land and motor vehicles would help address the setback that sees the taxpayer facing revenue deficits.
“That’s where we got a gap, and to address this, we are looking at the data that is available. You’ve got information when you're doing transactions at every level. That information or that transaction will be picked out,” Obell explained.
He further expressed optimism that the new efforts would boost the micro and small-scale businesses' contribution to the domestic taxes from the current 14 percent.
''If we look at our pins, we have about 20, 21 million pin holders and many of those missing are the small and micro tax payers. These are the ones we want to focus on,'' the commissioner said.
''If we look at their contribution today and the entire basket of domestic taxes, the medium, large and government entities are giving just about 86 percent. All these other numbers are giving us 14 percent.''
