KRA headquarters. The taxman has invited tender bids for developing an information system that will link a database of property in towns to owners and tax compliance records. PHOTO/FILE.
What you need to know:
Using geographic mapping is the latest strategy for the taxman to turn the heat on defaulters of rental income tax.
Early this week, KRA sent out demand notices to tenants requiring them to disclose their landlords and the amount they pay in rent.
The Kenya Revenue Authority is seeking hi-tech surveillance using satellite pictures to map real estate in towns as it steps up efforts to identify landlords to pay tax on rental income.
The taxman has invited tender bids for developing an information system that will link a database of property in towns to owners and tax compliance records.
“The mapping system will enable the authority to profile all buildings and match them with the owners,” said Kennedy Onyonyi, the KRA corporate communications officer.
Such a system will also integrate databases held by other government agencies such as the survey department, the Ministry of Lands and utility companies.
Using geographic mapping is the latest strategy for the taxman to turn the heat on defaulters of rental income tax.
Early this week, KRA sent out demand notices to tenants requiring them to disclose their landlords and the amount they pay in rent.
The authority has in the past also extended incentives to landlords including waiver of penalties and interest on unpaid taxes, but response has been lukewarm. The Geographic Information System (GIS) will capture, analyse, and display information pegged to a particular area.
KRA will, for instance, tell how many floors a high-rise building has from its portal.
James Waweru, the managing director of Esri Eastern Africa — a regional GIS mapping firm — says the use of such technology offers KRA a realistic chance of collecting tax on rental income efficiently.
“A GIS solution is a realistic approach because it would capture all data on a specific property and the utilities to enable KRA determine its usage,” said Mr Waweru, adding that such systems are used for revenue collection in developed economies.
The solution involves the use of mapping tools such as satellite photos from Google Earth to determine the footprint of buildings and assessment of individual property.
Integrating the findings with data from service providers like Kenya Power will enable KRA to estimate the number of tenants in a building.
KRA is stepping up revenue collection following increases in government expenditure occasioned by a rising wage bill and the costs of running general elections next year.
In May, KRA said that it was seeking to deploy new electronic tax registers with Internet capability to enable them transmit real time data. [email protected]
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