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{
    "id": 1105722,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1105722/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 404,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nominated, JP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. David ole Sankok",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13168,
        "legal_name": "Gideon Keter",
        "slug": "gideon-keter"
    },
    "content": "Tribunal who sit within the buildings of the KRA and also the Cabinet Secretary (CS) for the National Treasury is the appointing authority, the citizens may not be confident in finding justice. It will be very difficult for a goat to find justice before a panel of hyenas. The National Treasury and the KRA are interested parties in such disputes. When we amend the Tax Appeals Tribunal Bill so that the members of the tribunal are appointed by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), I will support it 100 per cent. This is so that we can delink the interested parties to ensure that there will be no conflict of interest in resolving such disputes. When we have full time membership, those appeals will not stagger for a long time. Business people know that time is money. Some of them are not Kenyans. They are just taxpayers who are foreign investors. When you consume their time and they go back to their countries only to appear before the Tribunal and one year passes before their appeals are resolved, you will scare them away. Scaring away investors means that our tax base keeps on shrinking. Kenyans are also not confident in finding justice in a tribunal that is domiciled within the National Treasury or the KRA. When that happens, most of them hide their businesses and incomes and end up not paying taxes. If they are confident that they will find justice in the appeal system in case of disputes or miscalculations because to err is human and the KRA staff are also human beings who are open to a few errors, they will be able to declare all their sources of income and businesses. We will then increase the number of people paying taxes and the tax base will widen. When the National Treasury and the KRA are the appointing authorities and they pay the members of the Tribunal, we run the risk of politically “weaponising” the collection of taxes and such appeals. In the recent past, we have seen instances where, whenever you differ with the powers that be, you will be visited the next day either by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), the KRA or the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI). Our refuge has been the Judiciary. Bringing them into the appointment of this Tax Appeals Tribunal will be a refuge to all those who have been fought politically using Government agencies like the KRA. People, especially politicians, have been hiding their earnings. Some of them have been hiding their businesses. They cannot declare their businesses in this country. Sometimes, they even invest outside the country because they fear that they will never get justice within the KRA and the Tax Appeals Tribunal. You have heard of offshore banking where Kenyans run away with their monies outside the country. Some of the laws like this one where the Tax Appeals Tribunal was domiciled within the KRA is one of the things that was scaring away those people. There was a time when the KRA used to look at our electricity bills. They would check the tokens to ascertain that you are paying electricity bills. All of a sudden, they will start saying that you have not declared your rental income. In the rural areas where we come from, our mothers or fathers may not be educated, but may have some chicken or small pig farms which they connect to electricity. The moment you have more than 10 electricity connections, the KRA will be on your neck. If there was a tax appeals tribunal that was independent and domiciled in the Judiciary, you will not have any problem because you will go to the tribunal and confidently explain that because your brother is not educated, he used your National Identity (ID) number or since he still does not have a KRA pin number, he used your pin number. That is why you have so many electricity connections. It is not that you have rental houses. There was a very big assumption on that and many Kenyans may not be declaring rental incomes. Some of them have registered in the name of their friends or brothers because they know that they will not get justice because of such laws. Amending this law is very important for this House and that is why I support it. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}