The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) now wants you to spy on your landlord so that it can improve its tax collection. After giving Kenyan athletes a big shock by forcing them to pay taxes on their hard earned winnings, KRA has now taken things a notch higher by calling on tenants to provide information on their landlords that will help the taxman know if they are cheating on their taxes.
The reason KRA has taken such unprecedented actions to increase its tax collection is that the treasury has recently been forced by a series of strikes by teachers, university lecturers, doctors and (most recently) police officers to increase its wage bill.
As recently as April, the treasury had reduced its revenue target from Ksh 733 billion to Ksh 716 billion. Now though that amount must be considerably higher. One of the signs that the treasury is broke came about two weeks ago when the government was forced to sign a Ksh 7.2 billion loan deal with Standard Chartered Bank to facilitate the acquisition of 15,000 BVR kits for the IEBC.
Some of the details that the KRA wants tenants to provide about their landlords are : full name of the landlord, national identity card number, KRA Personal Identification Number, postal address and telephone number.
Ephraim Murigu of the Urban Tenants Association says that KRA should not use tenants to get information on landlords;
“We have no problem with them getting the information, but they must use other channels,” he said.
Not everyone is against KRA’s move. Nikhil Hira of giant accounting firm Deloitte says it’s about time KRA took the leap;
“The issue is that many of them were not declaring their income,” said Hira.
“Basically, those that have not been paying taxes are evading tax, so this is the correct move by KRA. My issue is that they have taken so long to take this step.”
source:The Kenya DAILY POST
