“We have currently forwarded 118 cases to court from which we have lost we have so far lost Sh53 billion,” said Yego/FILE
NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct 3 – Kenya Revenue Authority says it has so far lost Sh53 billion in tax evasion cases in the new financial year that started on July 2019.
Commissioner for Tax investigations and enforcements Kenya Revenue Authority David Yego says the money lost was primarily from 118 cases already in court.
“We have currently forwarded 118 cases to court from which we have lost we have so far lost Sh53 billion,” said Yego.
He, however, declined to reply on tax avoidance matters in Kenya which has again seen the government sign a double tax agreement with Mauritius.
“Tax avoidance is very wide and I cannot and I cannot know how much is lost through that,” he added.
The announcements come at a time where KRA has continued to expand its tax base to catch tax cheats.
The latest one as reported by a local publication, KRA said that it will start monitoring individuals’ MPESA transactions to catch tax evader.
KRA is targeting to hit a target of Sh1.9 trillion in the new financial year where it mentioned that some, they suspect that some taxpayers who receive their income through mobile money and other online cash transfer platforms such as PesaLink and PayPal have been dodging taxes.
The Authority announced earlier that it is targeting to prosecute 600 tax evaders in 2019/2020 finance year.
The tax collector is also targeting to collect Sh15 billion from filed cases on tax evaders up from Sh 8.5 billion through the Investigations, Prosecution, and Publicity strategy and an additional Sh5 billion collected in 2018/19 and 2017/2018 respectively through the Investigations, Prosecution and Publicity strategy.
During the 2018/2019 financial year, the tax collector managed to gather Sh1.58 trillion, an 11.8 percent growth from Sh1.43 trillion in the previous year.
The efforts were majorly driven by the implementation of ICMs, integrated cargo scanning solutions, regional electronic cargo tracking system to reduce cargo diversion and uptake of itax system that has increased tax base.
Last year the tax base rose to Sh8million from Sh6.7 million in the previous year.
