I have seen very many reports in the media about people who are being charged for tax evasion… like this one https://citizentv.co.ke/news/mombasa-contractor-okumu-ouma-charged-with-ksh-41m-tax-evasion-305346/ What do you think is happening? Are they being caught because of importing Landcruisr V8s and Range Rovers or via third party information like property transfers? Is this going to be the new normal?
Joseph Okumu Ouma, a building contractor in Mombasa, has been charged with Ksh. 41million tax evasion.
The director at Jomoyosh Building Contractors Limited was arraigned before Senior Resident Magistrate Vincent Adet on Monday.
”He and his firm were charged with nine counts of evading payment of income tax worth Ksh. 31,417,070 and one count of evading Ksh. 9,670,344,” the Kenya Revenue Authority said.
Okumu and others suspects not before the court is said to have made incorrect entries in the firm’s income tax returns that reduced their tax obligation by Ksh 31.4 million.
He is also accused of altering his value added tax(VAT) returns for the period between January 2015 and December 2018 reducing his tax bill by Ksh 9.6 million.
Okumu however denied the charges and was released on a surety bond of Ksh. 2million with an alternative of Ksh. 500,000 cash bail. His case will be mentioned on December 9. Also Read:
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[li]Two directors of IT firm Olympus arrested over alleged Ksh.1.4B tax evasion[/li][li]Oil marketers approve stricter kerosene regulations[/li][li]Betting winners slapped with 20pc tax[/li][/ol]
In a separate case, Rebeccah Akinyi Ouma, a businesswoman was charged with evading taxes to the tune of Ksh. 2.9 million.
She is said to have failed to have filed her individual individual income tax return for the years 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.
As I said, KRA is becoming more potent. They leveraging big data to nab tax cheats. It is a top down approach where they start targeting the rich, moving down slowly to small fish.
When you finish trading insults, note that they are just starting and will catch many many more as they tighten the noose… the problem in my opinion is that this is going to make u tax-slaves considering that most of the cash collected is either stolen or misused by the Government and when the officers concerned are fingered they will play political games and other acrobatics in the judicial system and nothing much will be retrieved from it. Our digital activities have made it very easy for KRA to catch many and there is very little one can do to avoid getting caught especially if you deal in significant amounts in millions…
The fools in legislature have given the taxman unfettered access to all data without the latter going to court to request for authority to search and access anybody’s or institution’s data… one day some of the MPs will be caught and they will realize that they are silly fools who deserve to be in jail.
If you import a car, or anything significant, they match your importer’s KRA PIN with that of the domestic taxes on i-Tax and determine if they should call you for an interview if there is significant disparity between the transaction and your tax filing… they are also doing the same analysis any time you make a vehicle transfer on NTSA or property transfer through Lands Ministry… KPLC bills, Water bills are also being monitored…
Many of these guys who have been caught were caught when they accessed Government supplier’s portal, country governments databases, parastatals, etc and matched the supplier PINs with the i-Tax records… easy to do nowadays…
One of these days we’ll discuss taxation and the punitive laws that exist… you can be paying your taxes 100% but never followed a procedure and they will not care but penalize you for not following the procedure… for example, do you know that if a consultant works for you in the month and you pay them Kshs, 24,000 and above, you are expected to withhold 5% and pay KRA the withheld amount and the balance to the consultant? If you did not, they will ask you to pay 5% to them as principal amount, then penalty at 20% and interest at 2% per month? And they will ignore the payment you paid your consultant in full… then they will still look for the consultant and audit them to confirm that they included this payment and paid income tax in their annual filing! This is just an example… Remember the 24,000 was never your money so it was not your income but an expense?
Do you also know that if your employer deducts PAYE and does not remit it to KRA, you will not get you TCC? Do you know that if you receive cash on M-Pesa, bank account, you will be expected to show KRA that it was not income and that you ought to have declared it to them and paid 30% tax to them…? ANd the burden of proof will be on you?
This current wave is due to Big Data mining from third-party applications… very easy nowadays… Snitching used to be the main thing in the past but now KRA is relying 99% on technology…
Any statistics on money recovered by introducing new currency? I wish hawa tax evaders wanashikwa wangekua MPs na wakora wameiba treasury. The problem is that most of them don’t invest but only hide the money in overseas banks.
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All I know is veiled threats, travel bans and polite intimidation are their main weapons…when they have insufficient evidence. Anything collected illegally from the cyberspace will be thrown out of court.