BY THE STANDARD
The taxman has finally been granted complete access to snoop into Kenyans’ bank accounts. This is after the Central Bank of Kenya directed all banks to ask for a Kenya Revenue Authority Personal Identification Number (PIN) certificate before signing on clients.
A spot check by Weekend Business has established that most banks do not allow opening of accounts without a PIN certificate. “The directive has been there but they were not very strict but now you must have a PIN certificate to open an account,” staff member at one of I&M Bank’s branches told Weekend Business.
A member of staff at Standard Chartered Bank said the mandatory requirement kicked in on November 1 and that they could not open an account without the PIN certificate. While the requirement has existed as part of the Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, banks have now been told to enforce it as mandatory option after the CBK directive. The taxman set up a database known as Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence, which offers a single view of a taxpayer’s profile, linking them with third-party systems such as banks and utility firms for easier determination of compliance.
KRA has been keen on getting third party data including Safaricom’s M-Pesa to track the movement of money by individuals. The telecoms operator, however, said they would resist efforts by the taxman to gain unfettered access to the private data since ‘the Constitution of Kenya restricts access to confidential customer information’. Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich, through the Finance Bill 2016, amended a section of the Tax Procedures Act (TPA), laying the ground for KRA to get the data without necessarily seeking a court order.
“The iTax system has been crucial in expanding our tax base allowing us to link information from Ifmis (Integrated Financial Management Information System) bank accounts to ensure there are no leakages,” CS Rotich said on Thursday.
KRA Commissioner General John Njiraini is on record stating that the taxman would start comparing returns from transaction filings and bank balances. The taxman wants to use your bank data to analyse unreported activities of taxpayers including other sources of incomes, to detect tax fraud, and to score and rank risk profiles. KRA will be able to expand the tax base that currently nets around 4 million taxpayers to help the taxman meet the ever increasing tax targets set by the National Treasury.
Those likely to be locked out of banking facilities include several taxpayers who were kicked out of the taxman’s data base at the beginning of last month. The move to punish tax cheats with the termination of PINs was effected on those who did not migrate their profiles to the online platform.