Times Tower: the seat of Kenya Revenue Authority

Kenya is heavily riddled with corruption. That is not news. Kenyans are among the heavily taxed in the world. That’s no secret. What may be news, to some, is that all Kenyans are taxed more than once. We pay tax but are forced to spend part of our disposable on obligations supposed to be funded by those taxes.

Before 2003, the government used to collect just about 200 billion shillings in form of taxes but with the rationalization of the KRA (as the economy recuperated) and the will of the general public to give to Caesar what belongs to him, we are now targeting 545 billion shillings. When citizens let go part of their hard earned incomes to put it under the central management of the treasury, they expect that this will be prudently managed in improving the living standards of the people. Should the taxes and other revenues prove inadequate, if it deems fit, the government is at liberty of borrowing, debt which the same citizens are ready to service.

Now, it pinches when the citizenry religiously bid farewell to their hard earned penny only to get substandard services (or none at all) and receive little or no attention when disaster strikes. Examples abound.  Two years down the line, thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) cry foul. Forty six years after independence, the hunger problem is still a riddle, basic health is beyond reach, our road network is laughable, we are still crying for security, floods, city and municipal councils are pathetic among a myriad of problems. Yet for all these years, taxes are paid, and a child born today will be billed with at least KSh.30, 000 in form of per capita debt.

All our funds drain in a bottomless pit of mega-scandals (the latest is free primary education saga and God knows which other is baking), ghost and ill-planned projects, extravagant spending in form of a bloated cabinet, expensive foreign trips, hefty allowances, commissions of inquiries which are scams themselves, taskforces that are insulting (remember the one on MPs’ salaries), wasteful and expensive parties and retreats inter alia. Where the tax revenues are used to subsidize the cost of basic commodities, they wait for the money downstream – by buying the commodities themselves to sell to other markets or to the Kenyans; remember the maize scandal?

When a number of USA’s financial players showed their bellies up, the senators passed a motion for a 700 billion dollar bailout but only as a last resort, because they knew that that was taxpayers’ money, which should be prudently managed. Our legislators cannot be trusted to safeguard our interests. They are beneficiaries of major scams. They even have the audacity to siphon funds from donors. Our judiciary is no better. There are concerted efforts to rape our economy by politicians (and professionals) who want to pamper themselves when majority of Kenyans are wallowing in abject poverty. 

Double taxation comes in this sense: On several occasions, media houses and other philanthropists have launched campaigns to raise disaster funds. Kenyans, both individual and corporate, have donated millions of shillings as well as hundreds of tonnes of items. A shameless government has on several occasions organized fund raisings, from the same heavily taxed Kenyan. Since we cannot watch as our brothers and sisters die, our benevolence has always oozed in the name of fighting disasters. Surprisingly, it is coming to light that not all the money collected in the harambees reaches the intended persons.

Part of what you pay to the treasury ends up nourishing a few individuals’ pockets and we get back to our purses to mitigate the perennial problems- double taxation. Since the funds we borrow are misappropriated; the government debt is now just over one trillion shillings. Most debt funded projects have stalled. Assuming this will be paid (of course from the public coffers), Kenyans will have serviced a debt from which they did not, and will never benefit from-double taxation.

Through taxation, citizens share the burden of financing various undertakings aimed at raising their welfare. The benefits are not proportionate to what one pays individually. However, the taxes must be equitably, effectively and efficiently employed, and the benefits should trickle down to the masses. Anything short of this is public looting and misappropriation. Surprisingly, those who benefit most from the taxes do not want to pay taxes themselves.

It is painful to pay taxes in this country and it makes little sense to do so. If the government is unable to offer service delivery, it has no moral authority to collect taxes. For how long are we going to bear the unnecessary burden, you may ask?

Political bickering won’t put food on the poor Kenyans’ table, but the politicians will take home their salaries. They are a big liability. Even before we are halfway the political term, political realignments for 2012 are on. The squabbles in the coalition are as a result of personal political interests as opposed to national good. Consequently, the constitutional process and economic progress is threatened. The burden is heavy but the ultimate cure lies in riding ourselves of this crop of insensitive politicians (its next to impossible to think any of them is a leader). When hunger strikes (and so does any disaster), it doesn’t ask for your identification on the basis of tribe, political group, religion or any grouping; it is universal. So does corruption.

Muiruri Mburu.

Mr. Muiruri Mburu is an accountant with Fechim Investments Ltd, in Nairobi.