URA plans to extend Covid-19 tax administrative measures

Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) has said that it will extend most of the administrative measures created in light of covid-19 pandemic to encourage tax compliance from the public.
 
Mr John Musinguzi, the commissioner general (CG) URA while addressing journalists at the end of the year, revealed that the taxman is considering extending the measures into 2021.

“The administrative decisions or incentives put by URA, we are already reviewing those and we shall be happy to extend some of these into the next year. We shall extend a number of these such as alternative dispute resolution, voluntary disclosure among others,” he said as they foresee more adverse effects of Covid-19 on the economy in the second half of the financial year.

According to the CG, the measures have proved important and useful to both the tax payers and authority.
URA unveiled the measures at the beginning of this financial year with the aim of boosting compliance amongst taxpayers. However, the measures such as voluntary disclosure had deadlines.

Voluntary disclosure
Voluntary disclosure is a tax compliance enhancing measure introduced by URA during the 2020/21 financial year after the amendment of Section 66 of the Tax Procedures Code act 2014.

The programme pardons tax payers from interest or fines once they voluntarily disclose taxes that ought to have been paid earlier on but were not disclosed or were partially disclosed.

Voluntary disclosure only applies if the taxpayer has not been prompted by URA through tax investigations, audits or visits.  
By the end of September, URA had collected Shs14.3b in taxes that ought to have been paid from at least 19 companies.

In addition, Mr Musinguzi also said that the laws that were passed to provide relief to businesses such as deferred payments on Value Added Tax, Corporation and Withholding Tax will be sustained until the next financial year subject to review by Ministry of Finance.

URA was this financial year given a steep target of Shs21.8 trillion which was later revised downwards to Shs19 trillion due to the anticipated effects of Covid-19. However, URA has since registered surpluses in tax collection which the commissioner general said was partly as a result of lowered targets.

Tax collection                              
The tax prefect at the end of December had collected Shs8.6 trillion in taxes having grown the tax base by 92,000 tax payers to 1.6m with hopes of hitting Shs9 trillion.

The Authority said it would employ technology in its endeavors to plug tax leakages such as identifying potential tax payers in the real estate sector, the electronic fiscal receipting and invoicing solution and digital tax stamps among others.