Kenya Revenue Authority Commissioner General John Njiraini says Medium and Small Taxpayers segment recorded growth of 20.2 percent, while non-oil imports were affected by subdued growth of 3.8 percent in the value of dry imports.
NAIROBI, Kenya Jul 17 – The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has announced a 13.2 percent revenue growth of Sh93 billion (overall) and Sh88 billion (Exchequer) in the year 2012/2013 compared to 11.4 percent growth in the previous year.
Petroleum taxes increased by 8.5 percent at 67,819 in the year 2012/2013 compared to 2.4 percent at 66,251 in 2011/2012 while trade taxes increased by 22.5 percent to 180,353 in 2012/2013 financial year compared to 171,162 in the previous year.
Njiraini said that the number of containers landed for home use declined by 1.1 percent from 182,773 in 2011/12 to 179,340 in 2012/13.
“During the financial year we noted shift of import patterns towards goods of low or zero duty tariffs which may manifest mis-declarations of higher duty goods,” he said.
He said that customs services department has instituted measures to address this problem through targeting of goods entered under low or zero tariff.
“Measures include mandatory verification of containerized goods with declared values falling below defined threshold,” he added.
Njiraini said that non-enactment of the VAT Bill has negatively impacted domestic VAT with an estimated loss of Sh11 billion.
He said that professionals need to debate on this important policy to weigh alternative policy choices that may be used to address social concerns such as cost of living.
He said that KRA will champion the elimination of discriminatory tax treatments for products having similar characteristics as this has negative impact on tax performance.
Njiraini revealed that the Commissioner of Customs has relocated to Mombasa for the next three months to support both port improvement processes but importantly to address bottlenecks in revenue mobilization.
“The most affected segment is large taxpayers where VAT stood at Sh48.3 billion representing a growth of only 2.8 percent.
A project to implement remote transmission of Electronic Tax Registers data has commenced with completion date of December 2013.
The process will enable effective monitoring of ETRs to track usage, disconnection and locality, among others.
The initiative may also capture data on buyers for the purpose of implementing a customer loyalty programme.
Njiraini revealed that ITax roll out has been concluded and all modules rolled out formal launch expected in early august and mandatory electronic filing will be implemented by September 2013.
He also said that mobile payment platform is under development and will roll out by end of July 2013.
He also revealed that Kenya was ranked 164th place out of 185 countries in the world in 2013 according to PriceWaterCoopers. On paying taxes, the position worsened from 153 (2011) to 154 (2012).
“Kenya must improve investment climate competitiveness through reform of tax processes,” he said.
