Senators have requested the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) to collect county taxes, K24 reported on Monday, September 23.
The senators wanted the law amended so that counties would not lose money through what they termed as leakages within the revenue collection systems.
They cited over-projection, administrative inefficiency, gaps in policy and weak legislation as some of the issues costing counties billions worth of revenue.
The legislators want the Public Finance Management (PFM) Act amended in order to give KRA power to collect taxes on behalf of the counties.
Vihiga County senator George Khaniri contributed to the motion to have county governments to involve KRA in meeting their own-source revenue targets.
Agnes Zani, a nominated senator led the discussion with the lawmakers suggesting that KRA should work together with the Controller of Budget as per the PFM amendment Act.
"We will discuss this within the House and come up with a system that is going to be shared across various counties, mobilize and put very well so that the collection of this revenue can be well managed. This is so that there is a pattern and standardization across the counties," Zani divulged.
However, Bungoma Senator Moses Wetangula claimed that the low revenue collection in counties was due to the massive corruption.
"Money is, in fact, collected, but it is never declared because it ends up in people's pockets and private accounts," Wetangula revealed.
Wetangula also blamed parliamentary and county assemblies watchdogs committees for not doing their jobs as was required of them.
Senator Khaniri on his part noted that counties were over-depending on the national government funds. He also estimated that some counties were only getting 10% of their total budget from their revenue collection.
"It has been observed that counties have generally failed to collect the projected own-source revenue since the dawn of devolution in 2013. In most cases, counties are underperforming when compared to the defunct local governments," Khaniri affirmed.
