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"content": "VAT law. This VAT Bill, 2013 is a replica of the VAT Bill, 2012. I was one of its opponents in the last Parliament, and who made sure that the former Finance Minister withdrew this Bill because of a number of issues. The VAT Bill, 2013 is a very good law. This is a law that will create clarity. The current VAT law that we have is ineffective. It is also ambiguous. It does not help the business community. In this new proposed law, there is a roadmap as to how the business community will use this law to create a friendly investor environment. Secondly, the procedure of administration of any law, including the VAT law, must be one with a high degree of certainty and that will not take a lot of the taxpayersâ time. The World Bank came up with a report in 2010. They ranked countries in terms of hours wasted in paying taxes. How many hours does a taxpayer waste in a day, month or year? Kenya was rated at 72 per cent. This document is available. Kenyan taxpayers, the report reveals, waste 72 per cent of their time in filling forms and seeking VAT refunds every month. Kenya was ranked at 154 out of the 164 countries listed in that report. Rwanda, South Africa and Mauritius did much better. I think Rwanda was ranked 24th and South Africa 15th. What am I coming to? We must make the payment of taxes very efficient and less time consuming for our business community. The law that we have now on VAT, the compliance rate is very low. This means that the tax authority mandated to collect the tax is not aided at all. The current VAT law has created huge refund backlog, running into billions of shillings. The Chairman is telling me it is Kshs29 billion. Nobody can verify whether or not that backlog is genuine. We need to have a law which will ensure that the backlog is reduced. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, the VAT Bill, 2013 is one of the best in this region and even internationally, if only we enact it as law. If we do that we will be the best. A tax collection law must be very simple. It must be modern, efficient and improve compliance rates. This ought to be the time this House is full of hon. Members now that we are discussing this VAT Bill, 2013. This is because this is a matter that affects the people of Kenya. Parliament must increase the technical capacity of committees. Members must be encouraged to read Bills that come to this House. I do not think it was important for us to do an extension of time of a media Bill by four months when, during discussion on a VAT Bill that affects the common man and business people, we are less than 50 or 20 in the House. There must be a fundamental difference between exemption and zero-rating. Exemption must only be restricted to unprocessed items. Zero-rating must only be restricted to export of goods. It is from that dimension that we can determine the goods for which we can give exemption and the goods for we can zero-rate. There are people out there who are saying that if we tax unga then the common man will suffer. That is an illusion. I know that 75 per cent of poor Kenyans do not use processed unga . They do not go to supermarkets like Nakumatt. They buy their maize which is ground in posho mills. So, this VAT law is only imposing tax on processed unga . How many Kenyans go to Nakumatt Supermarket? And there is nothing wrong if we charged VAT on goods that are consumed by the middle class and the wealthy. Everywhere in the world the middle class and the wealthy pay taxes to support social security policy for the poor. I want hon. Ngâongo to listen to me. In Jubilee we are taxing everything, but we are creating more subsidies. We must say that. We tax the wealthy. We charge VAT on"
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