What this means is that KRA has unlimited access to records of Kenyans whom the agency thinks is a tax cheat. Including access to their property, computers and mobile phones.
According to the Business Daily, the court ruling compels firms like Safaricom to share M-Pesa records with KRA. Schools will have to share fees payment records with the taxman and banks will share clients’ data.
The courts have opened the way for the authority to seek records from third parties as well as to search and seize documents from suspected tax cheats. KRA could not interrogate or question the correctness of tax or duty declaration using third party data further than what had been declared by the taxpayer in the self-declaration form.
Banks also now form a key plank in KRA’s latest approach that emphasises on data gathering from third parties. The information includes account balances and flow of income. This enables authorities to check whether taxpayers have correctly declared their income.
The taxman detectives have been analysing companies’ financial dealings, especially firms doing business with the government and counties. They aim to nab tax cheats by matching their payments and incomes declared to KRA.
The KRA enforcement unit has been using various databases to pursue suspected tax cheats, including:
The taxman is racing to bring more people into the tax brackets and curb tax cheats and duty evasion. They are in the quest to meet revenue targets that KRA is missing.
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