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{
    "id": 1268232,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1268232/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 189,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Funyula, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr) Ojiambo Oundo",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "The Bill has essentially collapsed two different Acts that we have used for practice since the late 1950s to Independence - the Rating Act and the Valuation for Rating Act. They have combined the two and tried all they could to expand and enrich to fit the requirements of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010. On the issue of land administration, the central point, to which the Leader of the Majority Party tried to, is the issue of Land Information Management System. During the Committee of the whole House, the issue of integrating the Land Information Management System at the National Land Registry and at the county-level in respect of the valuation rolls has to be central to this particular Bill. I hope the Departmental Committee on Lands has had technical advice to make sure that we incorporate the same. Without the Integrated Land Information Management System, when this Bill becomes an Act, it will just be like the other that we have had before. In the realm of land taxation, there are a few issues that we must put in place. One, what is it that we are levying a tax on? Progressive legislation has moved away from the reference to land. We are talking about property taxation by expanding the definition of property in law compared to the limited definition of land. The question to answer is what we are taxing. Are we taxing income from the ownership of property? Are we taxing the brick and mortar buildings or the physical attributes of the land? There has been an attempt in the Bill to make it loose-ended such that at any given time, the only rating authority - and in this case, it is the county government - can choose any mode to use in taxation. The public finance section in the Constitution states that there must be uniformity in taxation. There must be some predictability so that if I am an investor in Mombasa and I want to own property, and there is another investor in Sio Port who owns property, we each pay the same amount of taxes. Therefore, as we move forward as a country, we must make a conscious and deliberate decision on what form of rating we will adopt. Do we adopt improved site value? Do we adopt improved property value? Do we go for area rating? That is the first area in which debate must be exhausted. That is why the Integrated National Land Information Management System (NLIMS) becomes critical because it will tell us what kind of land it is and its current use. Secondly, and equally important, is the issue of identification of property. The Land Registration Act of 2012 states that boundaries must be delineated and identified using the Geographical Positioning System (GPS). Unfortunately - and I will seek that answer from the Cabinet Secretary for Lands, Housing and Urban Development in due course - the number of title deeds that are on the GPS are very few. Without proper infrastructure in place, the proposal to have uniform application of the law throughout the country will be tedious and may not work. Since the promulgation of the current Constitution, the county governments have been domesticating the Rating Act and the Valuation for Rating Act for purposes of undertaking or preparing a valuation roll to collect revenue. The third most important thing is the identification of a rate-able owner. Who is a rate- able owner? Who draws the benefits? When is he or she an owner? If one holds a lease for 10 years, can he or she be considered an owner or not? That is a debate that we must have with time because that has been the lacuna in the law. You will find a number of properties where rates have been charged to one party yet someone else derives the actual benefits. We must have that debate as we enrich this Bill. The most controversial and contentious issue has been the rate track to be applied. In history, land taxation started during the feudal system in the United Kingdom (UK) where it was stated that as land owners derive benefits from public service, they must pay back for the maintenance and expansion of those services. All over the world, taxation has always been an emotive and political issue. If anybody ever doubted the politics of taxation, they must have seen the reality with the recent forcibly enacted Finance Act. 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."
}