The Kenya Revenue Authority is projected to miss the tax collection target by over Sh. 300 billion in the financial year ending June 2024.
This projection has been constant since late last year when the KRA missed periodic targets by huge gaps. For instance, data that was published by the National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Professor Njuguna Ndung’u showed that the KRA collected nearly Sh. 1.54 trillion in the period to March 2024. These collections for the nine-month period was Sh. 336.80 billion short of the propagated target of Sh. 1.87 trillion.
In the period between July 2023 and February 2024, the KRA collected 55 per cent of the Sh. 2.49 trillion target. These collections were less than half of the original ordinary revenue target of Sh. 2.787 trillion that was set in the June 2023 budget.
This data came in the wake of an alarm by Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) that the trend of missed targets by the KRA would eventually result in a missed tax collection target of Sh. 330 billion by the conclusion of the current financial year in June.
According to the latest data that was published by the Business Daily on Friday, the KRA missed its Pay As You Earn (PAYE) collection target by Sh. 72.3 billion in the first nine months of the current financial year.
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The data report showed that the KRA had set a collections target of Sh. 463.3 billion from salaries in the nine month period ended March 2024. However, it only managed to collect Sh. 390.96 billion. This represented a shortfall of 15.6 per cent that has been termed as the highest from all available data.
According to the National Treasury Principal Secretary Chris Kiptoo, the government currently has a revenue gap. He attributes this gap as the reason why the government used the provision of Article 223 of the Constitution to five KRA an additional Sh. 7.482 billion for revenue collection mobilization.
“By the end of June, we may not be able to collect the Sh. 300 billion that we anticipated in the current budget,” said Kiptoo.
