‘Tax not meant to raise rental fees’

Africa-Press – Zambia. The Malawi Rev­enue Author­ity (MRA) has said enforce­ment of rental income tax is not inten­ded to trig­ger rent hike. The rev­en­ue ­col­lec­tion body has said any increase would be a decision by land­lords/ladies rather than a require­ment of the tax sys­tem. Speak­ing dur­ing a media train­ing ses­sion in Blantyre on Tues­day, MRA Head of Cor­por­ate Affairs Wilma Chalulu said the author­ity was enga­ging journ­al­ists to ensure the pub­lic receives accur­ate inform­a­tion about new and exist­ing tax meas­ures.

Chalulu said that rental income tax was provided for under Sec­tion 11 of the coun­try’s tax­a­tion laws but had not pre­vi­ously been strongly enforced, in terms of col­lec­tion. “It does not mean that the rent­als are going to go up. If a land­lord increases rent­als, it is simply their beha­viour and, in fact, they will just be increas­ing the tax that they remit to MRA,” she said. MRA also tackled skep­ti­cism sur­round­ing the new Elec­tronic Invoicing Sys­tem, which some traders fear could amount to a new tax, double tax­a­tion or sur­veil­lance of busi­nesses.

Chalulu said the EIS was simply an upgrade of the elec­tronic fiscal devices intro­duced in 2014 and was meant to make com­pli­ance easier. Recently, MRA post­poned full enforce­ment of EIS to May 1, 2026 fol­low­ing protests from traders, who lamen­ted inad­equate con­sulta­tion and civic edu­ca­tion.

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