Kenya loses more than Sh400 million to tax crimes annually, the Kenya Revenue Authority(KRA) says as it intensifiesefforts to reduce the crimes.

Tax crimes such as tax evasion, bribery and corruption greatly impair revenue collection efforts of the taxman. The authority in efforts to curb the tax crimes,has rolled out an initiative dubbed ‘PigaFirimbinaKRA’ (blow the whistle) ahead of the end of the financial year

The initiative is complemented by KRA’s reporting solution called iWhistle where Kenyans are able to anonymously report tax offences. The channel exists under the whistle-blower framework which was implemented to encourage members of the public to volunteer information on malpractices.

The whistle-blower is complemented by a framework where those  who volunteer information that results in recovery of tax revenues are rewarded. The framework provides for a reward of whichever is lower between five per cent of the recovered tax or Sh2million.

This anonymous platform was informed by a survey conducted in 2019 and published in 2020 by Transparency International Kenya, that noted majority of Kenyans do not report corruption cases.

The survey titled “Kenya Bribery Index 2019”, reports that 87 percent of respondents sampled in 2019 never reported corruption cases.

However, compared to a similar survey conducted in 2017 where 94 per cent of the respondents noted that they never reported corruption cases to authorities, the 2019 survey points to a slight improvement.

“While there are respondents who felt that no action would be taken even if they reported the cases, others opted not to report the cases for fear of intimidation,” the survey notes.

The information led to the enhancing of the taxman’s intelligence gathering and management function to allow for 100 percent anonymous reporting of the said malpractices.

A report by The Africa Initiative dubbed “Tax Transparency in Africa 2020”, estimates that Africa suffers revenue loss of around $40 to $80 billion every year to tax evasion. This amount can fund key projects in the continent. Kenya’s government is part of this initiative which seeks to exploit the improvements in global transparency to better tackle tax evasion. 

KRA targets to hit new levels in revenue collection this financial year after surpassing his collection target for  five months in a row since December 2020 despite a challenging economic environment in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The taxman reported a revenue performance of Sh176.7 billion in April 2021 against a set target of 170.2 billion. In March 2021, KRA collected Sh144.6billion, surpassing the Sh138billion revenue target.

KRA attributed the performance to enhanced active surveillance and enforcement which has been supported by it’s investment in technology in initiatives such as IWhistle. The authority’s collections from income and value-added taxes however fell by Sh90.66 billion in the first half of the fiscal year on the back of reliefs extended to alleviate Covid-19 shocks.