KRA Wants Tax Defaulters Blacklisted

The Kenya Revenue Authority wants tax defaulters blacklisted by Credit Reference Bureaus  to shore up revenue collection.

Appearing before the Parliamentary Finance Committee, KRA commissioner John Njiraini the Committee that most of its revenue is held in debt and that legislation on blacklisting defaulters will support in debt collection from ‘hard core’ debts and improve tax revenue yields.

“A legal framework to help us deal with defaulters will help us collect a lot of revenue from tax cheats,’’ Njiraini said.

The revenue collector is behind revenue collection schedule for the current financial year by Sh55 billion and it might miss its overall target by up to Sh110 billion.

This means, a miss in revenue collection targets for the current financial year will be more than double compared to last year’s collection deficit of Sh45 billion.

This despite revising the target for this fiscal year by five per cent to Sh1.605 trillion from Sh1.69 trillion according to Treasury’s statement of Actual Revenues and Net Exchequer.

Last year, the revenue collector managed Sh1.37 trillion against a target of Sh1.415 trillion.

According to Njiraini, efforts by his office to meet revenue targets set by the National Treasury are curtailed by poor funding, saying that although revenue collection targets have been increasing every year, funding to the agency has stagnated for past five years.

“We propose CRB listing of non complaint taxpayers will be based on criteria that would be fair and equitable to all tax payers,’’ Njiraini said.

KRA also proposed to raise excise duty on betting by 10 per cent to 25 percent.

Last year, the government caved in to pressure from betting firms to cut gaming tax from 35 percent of revenue to 15 percent.In addition to this, the tax man wants a legal provision to allow access to third party information to address the current legal framework on sharing information related to matters tax with a view of enhancing level of compliance.