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{
    "id": 421197,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/421197/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 173,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ng’ongo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 110,
        "legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
        "slug": "john-mbadi"
    },
    "content": "the item form VAT, because it is in the same category as infant milk. We all know what infant milk is all about. It is a sensitive product together with other milk types. This will also help in simplifying tax administration. Let me explain that. By simplifying tax administration, I mean that the moment you leave ambiguity in terms of taxing of items, then you automatically make it complicated and you give room for corruption. Tax authorities can easily interpret law, whichever way they want, for their own benefit. Therefore, if you want to exempt milk items, exempt all the milk items, so that you do not allow any room or loophole for any tax officer to take advantage of the law. This will help in simplifying tax administration as I said, and it will also have minimal effect on revenue collection. This tabulation has been done, not just by myself, but even by the Parliamentary Budget Office. Allow me to move to exempting animal feeds. The Bill intends to exempt animal feeds made from waste vegetable material. All animal feeds are currently subject to 16 per cent VAT. This is making animal rearing in this country very expensive. We may need to even include all the animal feeds to be exempt from VAT. Next are insecticides, rodenticides, fungicides and herbicides. The amendment to exempt these items will include even livestock drugs and medicines. I was targeting the dairy industry because it has become a significant industry to the economy at the moment. Currently, all agricultural chemicals and drugs are subject to 16 per cent VAT. We all know that the market for this product is quite large at the moment. So, if we want to help animal rearing in this country and those whose livelihood is dependent on dairy farming, we need to consider animal feeds and animal chemicals and drugs that are used to treat them. I have now come to a very interesting thing, that is ambulances and hearses. I call it an interesting thing because some people have explained why we include hearses. To some communities, hearses are as important as ambulances. This is because we value the dead. In fact, if you do not give the dead a decent burial, many of us believe that you will be haunted by the same dead in future. Therefore, we need to consider, not only ambulances that take care of the living who want to live longer, but also the dead by giving them decent burials. Ambulances and hearses are currently subjected to 16 per cent VAT, but were initially zero-rated."
}