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{
    "id": 601968,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/601968/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 216,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ogalo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2679,
        "legal_name": "George Oner Ogalo",
        "slug": "george-oner-ogalo"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker for giving me this opportunity to also contribute to this very good Bill. This Bill is going to provide a mechanism through which individual Kenyan citizens and corporates are going to relate with KRA. It is going to streamline channels of communications. It is going to provide for fair administrative action on the part of KRA, so that taxpayers have a fair way of handling the decisions that are made by KRA. Citizenship is a membership of a country to get the benefits and acquire responsibilities and obligations. Taxation is one of the obligations that every citizen holds as a condition of citizenship. Each citizen should have a mechanism of ensuring he or she continues being a citizen of that country by paying taxes and obeying the laws. We are now passing a law to regulate how citizens are supposed to behave in paying taxes. On the converse, after paying taxes and becoming a citizen, there are benefits that one must get as a citizen of a country. Those benefits include security for yourself and your property, rule of law, fairness, accessibility to services and infrastructure. Those benefits should be equivalent to the taxes that you pay. The process of paying taxes should be such that it is easier to pay than to evade. It is should be more convenient to pay than to work out ways of avoiding tax. Taxes should not be so high that avoiding them makes economic sense to the taxpayer. Taxes should be directly related to the services that citizens get. You cannot pay taxes and, at the end of the year, you hear that 60 per cent of the taxes you paid went to paying for loans. You also hear that those loans were borrowed to purchase things that the country did not need. We have been getting reports before this Parliament about the Eurobond. That is money that Kenyans agreed to borrow under the Eurobond facility. When you hear what the Eurobond was used for, some of us shudder at the prospect of our future generations being saddled with this debt. There is no development that will make their lives easier. I will repeat that taxes must be commensurate with the services that you receive. You cannot pay taxes as an owner of a building or as a landlord and the road to your property cannot be maintained. Then, there is no relationship between the money you are paying as a landlord and the service you are getting from the taxing authority. When a public officer allows smuggled goods to get into the country, there are two things that happen. One, the smuggled goods come into this country without paying taxes to the Government. So, the country loses. Two, the smuggled goods come in to compete with locally manufactured goods. I will give the example of sugar. We now have reports that there is smuggling of sugar from Somalia into Kenya. When that sugar comes into Kenya, it kills Mumias Sugar Company (MSC) and South Nyanza (SONY) Sugar Company. Mumias Sugar Company and the SONY cannot sell their sugar. It is more expensive than the smuggled sugar. The smuggled sugar has not been paid taxes for. So, the Government does not receive tax. For the Government to get taxes from Mumias and SONY, they must sell their sugar. So, the Government is losing double. Even the legitimate tax that they would have received is lost. 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."
}