Following Sunday’s Rwanda TV and Radio’s live talk where a member of public called in complaining of lack of information about tax issues, the tax agency has refuted the claims saying members of public pretend.
In an interview with Nkusi Mukubu Gerald the Director of Tax Payers Services Department at Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) said that his institution had a lot to ensure public awareness on tax related issues.
“It is so unfortunate if they are complaining, however we have done much to make the whole country covered with tax education, of course I can’t say it is 100% but at least 98% which wouldn’t result into such complaints,” Mukubu said by cell phone.
Mukubu said that RRA has been carrying out several tax education in the country citing different events in up country including one that was carried out in Burera District in Northern Province.
“Taxation issues are complex, you can’t know all of it but some of the tax payers do exaggerate and fail to see what government is doing for them and so some pretend they have not received any tax education, just yesterday I received a call from Burera District the same area we carried out a workshop and had a celebration of tax payers day recognizing the best tax payers,” Mukubu added.
He however revealed that some of them have fear of arrears of taxes not paid in the past three years and end up creating pretext that they have no information about taxes.
Mukubu called upon the public to suggest the best channel and way RRA can help them to be tax educated.
“We have a hotline 3004 which one call and get answered by an expert who answers almost every query, we have a system that they can use to pay taxes or ask anything about taxes but they can propose to us which way we can use, we can adjust, we are flexible,” he added.
Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) has set a target of collecting at least Rwf 533.8 billion in tax revenues during the current 2011-2012 fiscal year.
Recently, the Commissioner General of RRA, Ben Kagarama, during the last fiscal year, the tax body had set a target of Rwf 458 billion, which they surpassed by collecting Rwf 491 billion.
Among the challenges Kagarama cited were mainly tax evasion, giving an example of taxpayers registered for Valued Added Tax (VAT) but who fail to issue VAT invoices.
The RRA chief further noted that some traders use forged documents by under-declaring their taxes through a reduction in turnover.
ENDS
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