The Court of Appeal has reinstated sections of the law, which
were frozen in 2018, allowing KRA to get information from third parties on
persons or firms suspected to be tax cheats.
The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) has regained powers to seek
workers’ and businesses’ financial transactions from third parties like banks,
mobile telephone firms and schools in efforts to crack down on tax cheats.
The Court of Appeal has reinstated sections of the law, which
were frozen in 2018, allowing KRA to get information from third parties on
persons or firms suspected to be tax cheats.
The court ruling issued last week compels firms like
Safaricom to share M-Pesa records with KRA, schools to share fees payment
records with the taxman and for banks to share clients’ data. The restored
Section 60 of the Tax Procedures Act compels all such third parties to share
information with the taxman. Those that defy KRA’s orders will be liable to a
fine of Sh1 million or a jail term of three years or both should they fail to
provide details to the taxman
KRA is seeking to match data from the third parties capturing
flow of cash against tax remittances in the race to nab those evading duty
payments. In May 2018, Justice George Odunga had declared sections 44(1) and
(2), 60(1) and (3) and 59(4) of the Tax Procedures Act, 2015, unconstitutional.
0 Comments