The taxman has missed the revenue target by Sh69 billion in the first nine months to March.
Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) said it had collected Sh811billion between July 2015 and March this year, against a target of Sh911billion set by Treasury for the period. At the same time KRA announced it had started a lifestyle audit of its employee to seal tax leakages.
This amount raised is Sh88 billion more than what it collected in a similar period in 2014/15 but has been running behind new targets set by the Treasury. The taxman collected Sh753billion in a similar period last year but the expanding budget has seen the Government ask for more from the taxman.
“A continued weak business performance undermined performance of corporation tax. We started receiving these reports in the first quarter from players in the private sector,” KRA Commissioner General John Njiraini said at a briefing yesterday.
Treasury had set a 20.9 per cent revenue growth target for the taxman. But KRA has only met about half that target after it posted an 11.7 per cent growth, which it sees as strong enough given the tough economic environment that has seen many companies report losses or decline in profitability.
“Banks are also having problems and some have told us they have had to provide heavily for non-performing loans and this has affected their performance. When businesses fail to pay their loans, that is also another sign that they are struggling and this translates to our revenue performance,” Njiraini added.