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{
    "id": 1003301,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1003301/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 385,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Molo, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Kimani Kuria",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13435,
        "legal_name": "Francis Kuria Kimani",
        "slug": "francis-kuria-kimani"
    },
    "content": "19. Also, when we reopen the country, we want to ensure it moves forward. At the same time, we do not want to overburden our citizens with more taxes and squeeze the blood and water left in them. I must admit that this was a very tricky Finance Bill but through our collective effort we got where we are. From the outset, I want to say that majority of Kenyans would like to pay their legal obligation in terms of taxes. They are willing to do so. But what pains them is when a person who earns Kshs40,000 and pays PAYE because it is compulsory, gets to hear of someone else who has not paid millions and billions of shillings of taxes, and that money is not being prudently spent by the Executive. The Executive must ensure that the money collected from Kenyans is well spent. When that happens, people are going to be willing to pay much more to KRA because they can see that they have better roads, they do not have power outages and the money that they spend is being used prudently. A lot has been discussed about the digital services tax and there are things I would like to demystify. This tax is meant for non-resident companies. I will give an example. The biggest taxi company in the world is called Uber. This company does not own any vehicles in this country. They are not even a registered business enterprise in Kenya and yet you can see how they came, destabilised and really took over the taxi business in Kenya yet there was no place for us to touch them and tax them. They are not a registered company in Kenya and so they were not paying taxes for all this time and yet they drove out drivers out of business. We are saying that those corporations that are outside there that generate income from Kenya through these digital platforms, then they must pay taxes from that income. If they are paying taxes they do not need to get worried because that tax can be offset when they are filing their returns at the end of the financial year. So it is not an additional tax whatsoever. If you are paying your correct taxes you do not need to be worried. There is the discussion that it is going to lead to some loss of jobs. I am tempted to believe that this will even increase some of the jobs that we have and create more jobs."
}