It is disappointing that the National Treasury’s big promise that money remitted back to Kenya under the tax amnesty would be put to use in growing the economy is coming to naught.
The revelation by the Kenya Revenue Authority that it has lost trace of the billions wired back to the country is worrying, given that taxpayers have had to forego huge tax revenue on the promise that the money would be deployed locally to create economic opportunities.
It is on this ground that the public accepted to allow the amnesty in the first place, and therefore the taxman must not stop at announcing that the money has vanished.
In an economy where the private sector is struggling to keep businesses afloat due to lack of credit, an injection to the tune of billions would invariable filter through to these enterprises by way of a broader business value chain, thus saving thousands of jobs.
Kenya has been facing tough competition from her neighbours in the fight for foreign direct investment and foreign inflows, thus these remittances were supposed to buttress the country’s inflows by acting as legitimate capital coming it to finance the economy.
The KRA must now go after the individuals who brought in the money and hold them to account to show how it is being gainfully deployed into the economy, that is if they have not already wired it back out of the country in the first place.
Letting them off without question will mean that they were simply using the amnesty to clean and legitimise their ill-gotten wealth before sending it back to safe havens.
The reading from the KRA’s revelation is that the amnesty beneficiaries have broken their end of the bargain, and the government should therefore not face any constraint in going after them and demanding to see their source of funds and taxing the same.
Where suspicions arise, and it should be easy to identify all those who took advantage of the amnesty, the government should move without delay to do further investigations and confiscate any ill gotten money.
There must also be cross border cooperation with friendly jurisdictions to help trace any funds that might have been sent back out after enjoying the amnesty.
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Note: The results are not exact but very close to the actual.
