Africa-Press – Uganda. The deputy speaker of Parliament, Thomas Tayebwa has revealed that government should focus on value addition on exports, enhancement of domestic revenue and elimination of corruption if the country is to meet its tax obligations.
In his remarks during the BDO-Signum Tax meeting held in Kampala on Tuesday, Tayebwa said the country has continued to lose taxes indirectly through exporting unprocessed goods which are later imported back into the country as final products at a high cost.
“We need to address our appetite for borrowing, whenever you have an economic crisis banks are registering abnormal profits in Africa, this is because government fails to meet its domestic revenue taxes, bank auctions are everywhere,” Tayebwa added.
“Uganda which is Africa’s number one coffee exporter gets 860m dollars from coffee and you find the same coffee on the world market is worth around 20-30b dollars, so aren’t we losing tax indirectly?”
Tayebwa also expressed government’s commitment to invest the taxes into the key sectors of the economy to ensure full recovery from Covid-19
“On the political side, we should ensure that money is put in building of infrastructure that facilitates businesses, keeping the country secure, ensuring good health services and education to stimulate the economy so that we produce more tax payers,” he opined.
“People want to pay taxes, but they lack compliance motivation. So, if we use the collected taxes appropriately, it will be very important for compliance. Our tax collecting agencies should be looked at as partners, not as enforcers, I don’t want to force people, you can serve people into compliance,” he highlighted.
While speaking at the Labour Day celebration in Namutumba District on Monday, President Museveni cautioned the corrupt officials inside the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA).
“I already have a report about these groups and you will hear what will happen. The army has done its work. We have stabilised the country and that is why investors are coming,” Museveni remarked.
According to Tayebwa, Uganda is targeting to collect more revenue from digital services.
“We want to strike a balance. Anyone getting commission should give us our 15 per cent tax. We already have it on mobile money. I think by the end of this week, it will be charged on agency banking as well,” Tayebwa noted.
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