The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) was on Wednesday, September 4, forced to publish a statement to clear the air over a story published by the Business Daily.
In the statement, the taxman stated that the article titled ‘Relief as KRA Suspends New Tax’ was inaccurate and misleading.
The story published on Tuesday, September 3, 2019, claimed that KRA had temporarily suspended taxes on bottled water, juices, soda, other non-alcoholic beverages and cosmetics.
On the statement, the taxman gave three points to counter the narrative that was pushed by the NMG publication.
First, KRA revealed that they had not suspended the tax and therefore any other narrative was untrue and misleading.
They further noted that taxes were imposed by the law which becomes effective by way of a statute and therefore the taxman had no mandate to defer the implementation of the same.
Second, they divulged that they had postponed the implementation of the Excisable Goods Management System (EGMS) which they called a tool for accounting of excise production and traceability of excisable goods.
They went on to clarify that the tool was not a tax.
In the statement, the third point the wanted to clarify was that the postponement of the implementation was to enable manufacturers to complete the installation of the EGMS before a new go-live date was communicated.
Finally, KRA announced that implementation of the EGMS on production lines was ongoing at manufacturers’ premises and that nine percent of automated lines had been installed.
