URA has less than two months to collect about Shs1.6 trillion

Kampala. Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) has about five weeks to collect Shs1.6 trillion (10 per cent) before the 2018/19 financial year ends.

URA has a target to domestically mobilise Shs16.3 trillion before the 2018/19 financial ends but, according to details, it has so far collected Shs14.7 trillion, leaving a shortage of Shs1.6 trillion, which URA must collect before the end of June.

Speaking during the signing of a partnership between URA and Airtel to launch a new tax payment platform for small and medium enterprises in Nakawa, Kampala early this week, Ms Doris Akol, the URA commissioner general, said there is still some 10 per cent that is yet to be collected but efforts have been made to collect it before the end of next month.

“We have collected about 90 per cent of revenue already,” Ms Akol responded when asked about the revenue collection targets for the financial year 2018/19.

Collection targets
Government set a target of Shs16.3 trillion for the 2018/19 financial years, which is nearly Shs1.5 trillion more than what was collected in the 2017/18 financial year.

The partnership between URA and Airtel, Ms Akol said, is one of the many initiatives that have been established overtime to ease tax collection as well as help the tax collector to realise its targets.

Such platforms, which were adopted by URA in 2012, have since registered more than 370 transactions, generating more than Shs213m in revenue.

URA, Ms Akol said was hopeful that in the next one month “we will have achieved well beyond 100 per cent revenue collection”, noting that voluntary compliance is expected to improve due to rollout of a number of payment systems.

Noble responsibility

Mr Amit Kapur, the Airtel Uganda chief commercial officer, said taxpayers must be availed with reliable and convenient method of paying taxes, noting that stakeholders must take on the noble responsibility to ease tax payment, especially for SMEs.

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