URA recovers Shs25 billion from tax evaders

Uganda Revenue Authority enforcement department has collected about Shs25 billion in revenue from tax payers who were trying to evade their obligations, the head of enforcement team has said.
While releasing the enforcement report last week at a news conference in Nakawa, Kampala, the assistant commissioner enforcement, Mr James Kisaale, said compared to the previous years, smuggling is reducing although with technological advancement, electronic fraud is emerging as a new challenge.
“Enforcement operations which we carried between November last year to October this year led to 5635 seizures which yielded total revenue recovery of Shs25.2billion in both taxes and fines,” Mr Kisaale said.
He continued: “These recoveries were made on goods worth Shs52 billion in value. Out of this, the total fraud value of the non-dutiable goods was Shs 8.7 billion and the total fraud value of the dutiable goods was Shs43, 314million.”
According to the annual enforcement report, undervaluation, facilitated by electronic fraud remains one of the biggest challenges that the tax collectors are paying a lot of attention to. The report also showed recovery from under valuation of goods over the last 12 months stood at Shs9.8 billion which was 39 per cent of the total tax recoveries.