Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 954747,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/954747/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 439,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Ugenya, MDG",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. David Ochieng’",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2955,
        "legal_name": "David Ouma Ochieng'",
        "slug": "david-ouma-ochieng"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. As we enforce tax laws, the primary factor is whether we can collect tax and not how many people we can jail. When the KRA Commissioner-General comes on television and says that he will come after many and jail them, whom will he come after? Kenyans are the ones making this Government work. The best approach is to ensure that people pay tax. He cannot jail all of us. The Commissioner-General should know that he cannot jail all Kenyans because they did not pay tax. He must be innovative. He must talk to Kenyans to enable them to understand why paying tax is important. Where there are problems or issues, those must be sorted out based on the law. We do not want to hear people being arraigned in court or taken like criminals all over the place because they did not pay a certain amount of money. Talk to them and make them understand. Where people evade tax, use the necessary instruments. Taking people to court should be the very last and most punitive resort. I say this with a lot of respect for the Commissioner. You arrest 100 people and say that people were sending them Kshs1,000 or Kshs2,000. We have people at the highest level of KRA on the payroll of Indians in this country receiving Kshs5 million, Kshs10 million or Kshs20 million every month to protect them from paying taxes. Your tax obligation is Kshs50 million. Then they sit with you and tell you that you do not need to pay Kshs50 million and you give them Kshs25 million. Others tell you to give them Kshs5 million and then you pay tax worth Kshs5 million. If they can enforce the tax regime in the right way, we will be collecting triple what we are collecting today. They should ensure that they are doing the right thing. The current tax bracket is so wide that they need to ensure that everyone else is involved in it and then have the resources concerned."
}