Unveiling the national budget proposal for the 2016/17 financial year, Finance and Planning Minister, Dr Philip Mapango, said in theNational Assembly recently that TRA was going to take over the duty of collecting property tax from the local government. He noted that the move was aimed at maximising revenue collection from the current booming housing sector.
TRA Domestic Revenue Commissioner Elijah Mwandumbya told the ‘Daily News’ that the authority would conduct a special vetting exercise in the selection of local government staff who would permanently work as tax collectors.
“We will do the screening to acquire the cream of local government staff that would be able to do this job properly,” Mr Mwandumbya said in the sidelines of the press conference conducted at the TRA headquarters on Tuesday.
He said that in the first few months of 2016/7, they would use the tax collection system applicable in the local government authorities before introducing the TRA systems. “During this one month, we will work on assessing the local authorities’ systems of collecting tax.
Thereafter, we will establish our systems, which are more efficient,” he quipped. TRA Commissioner General (CG) Alphayo Kidata said the authority was getting ready to start the new task of collecting property tax.
When debating the national budget proposal, the opposition camp in the Parliament faulted the move by the government to transfer the mandate of collecting property tax from local authorities to the TRA, arguing that the move will cripple the local councils.
The camp argued that property tax was among the major sources of revenue for the local councils and that the decision to leave the task to TRA will negatively impact on the authorities.
Mr Mpango said in his budget speech that the decision was based on TRA’s experience in revenue collection, existing tax collection systems and coverage across the country as well as lessons learnt from other countries like Ethiopia and Rwanda.
Culled from Daily News
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