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{
    "id": 1076668,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1076668/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 413,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Othaya, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Gichuki Mugambi",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13463,
        "legal_name": "James Gichuki Mugambi",
        "slug": "james-gichuki-mugambi-2"
    },
    "content": "which made losses. When you tax them on sales, you are already killing them. We have very low margin businesses in this economy. They have high turnover, but they do not have the margin. If you tell them to pay you money in advance, you will kill them. In the long term, we are going to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. I know we have to definitely finance our budget operations, but we must be careful not to affect our long-term survival by killing entrepreneurship and businesses which are employing hundreds and thousands of Kenyans. When you take businesses like oil business downstream, the margins are very low, but turnover is high. In businesses like steel manufacturing, their turnovers are very high, but margins are very low. If you tax them on turnover, you are going to kill them and we should stick to the principles of good taxation system. A good taxation system will always ensure that you tax those who should be taxed to always ensure that it is easy to administer tax. Today, we are introducing some tax system where you have even to go and employ a tax collector in a farmers shade to monitor the hen when it is laying the egg, to make sure that you tax that egg. That is not the principle of a good tax system. The principle of a good tax system should be to give the farmer time to feed his chicken, to collect his eggs, to take them to the market, to come back and calculate profits and then pay tax on what is remaining. That is a good tax system. The one where you monitor whether a chicken is about to lay an egg and then you ask the farmer whether it is you to take the egg or the farmer, is a bad tax system."
}