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{
    "id": 1347031,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1347031/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 549,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Kikuyu, UDA",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Kimani Ichung’wah",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "The second issue is on the question of whether or not we are overtaxing Kenyans. Recently when I visited France, I was in a meeting where the president of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was asking European countries to increase their tax to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratios. In that meeting I was seated next to someone from Austria and I asked them what the tax to GDP ratio in their country is. They told me 43.6 per cent. While in the same meeting, I googled and found that France was in the region of 48 per cent. Close to 50 per cent. The US is at 16 per cent on federal tax. If you go to the States, a State like California, that is the size of Kenya although its economy is much bigger, is at 13.5 per cent. That tells you they are about 29.5 per cent. Our tax to GDP ratio today is only at about 15 per cent. When you say Kenyans are being overtaxed and yet we are the same people going to the US and France to borrow money, that money is not manna from heaven. It is money that those countries have raised from their taxpayers. We want other people to be taxed for us to get that money, but we do not want to pay taxes."
}