The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has expressed concerns over the increasing trend by businesses to ditch mobile money payments for cash.
On Tuesday, October 17, 2023, KRA’s Head of the Domestic Taxes Department Caroline Rotich revealed that the taxman was concerned about the new trend.
“It is already noted that (closure of mobile money payment accounts) is what is happening in the market. We are working on strategies on how we can work around this,” Rotich said.
In what seems to be a game of cat and mouse, Rotich revealed that they are determined to collaborate with Safaricom and other service providers to investigate the tax cheats.
“Working together with Safaricom to facilitate with integration, we will get information on these drop-outs so that from there we can do follow-ups and compliance checks. We have several officers now who are doing compliance checks around the main towns. This will help us address this issue,” she added.
The revelations come weeks after KRA deployed Revenue Service Assistants (RSAs) to ensure tax compliance.
In a public notice released on Monday, September 25, 2023, KRA said that the RSAs would be tasked with helping the public with major tax issues.
“We would like to inform the public that we have launched the Revenue Service Assistants program to support taxpayers with their compliance needs, including online registration, verifying taxpayer info, eTIMS compliance, Excise regulations compliance, and data collection,” KRA stated.
The RSAs will provide on-site facilitation to taxpayers, which will involve physical visits to taxpayer premises within the country.
The move seems to have brushed small traders the wrong way, who are now seemingly making an extra effort to evade the taxman.
