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{
    "id": 1252927,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1252927/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 335,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kacheliba, KUP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Titus Lotee",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Speaker for allowing me to contribute to the Finance Bill. As a Member of this respected House and a member of the society that has a mental capacity to think, I want to contribute to this Bill as follows. Far from it, there is a lot of information that has gone to the public that this Bill is supposed to be punitive to Kenyans. However, after looking through it, I realised that it is trying to address the inefficiency that has been there in our tax regime. We have been collecting very little amount of revenue vis-à-vis the capacity that we have. This Bill is not as punitive as we are being told. I looked through it and realised that only three main taxes had been introduced and the rest are being made efficient. The first one is the monetisation of the digital content. This is according to the principal of taxation where it is supposed to be as evolving as possible to respond to the evolving nature of our society. When our tax regime was done, there was very little in digital content. Because Kenyans are embracing the digital content very quickly, our tax regime is also supposed to embrace it. So, introducing 15 per cent tax on the digital content is in regard to the evolvement of the same. This is very nice because we have seen our revenue falling because a lot of advertisements and content are done digitally. So, the mother of our taxation is also reducing because we cannot now net in the traditional taxes. So, it is important that we also move along with the digital migration. The other new tax that I have seen is the club entrance fee. Initially, it was free and was only for the privileged. The club members who are seated here pay hundreds, thousands or millions of shillings to clubs and yet they are supposed to be exempted. There is no common man or person who benefits from this. I laud the fact that we need to introduce a tax for these clubs, so that we can net in those people who are members who use a lot of money and want to be exempted. The other one is the introduction of 5 per cent withholding tax on advertisements. There are a lot of diseases that come to this country because advertising has become very cheap that people mislead Kenyans. We have seen people being conned and buying powders that are not genuine because there is no tax in advertising. Introducing a 5 per cent withholding tax on this will safeguard Kenyans from the conmen who advertise for free. Finally, I will go to the Housing Levy. This country hosts three main slums out of 10 in Africa. Until we agree that we want to move out of the slums, we will continue criticising and saying that we are not ready. We should be ready now. We want to move from being a country where people live in slums to a developed country. Everybody in this country, including the people of Kacheliba, contributed to the construction of the Thika Superhighway, the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) and the Nairobi Expressway, but they do not use them on daily basis. We are all supposed to contribute to the Housing Levy. When Kenyans get houses, whether you get it or not, it is for the common good of this country."
}