CSOs concerned about new tax proposals
The civil society has raised concerns over government’s newly proposed tax measures that are geared towards increasing the resource envelope in the 2019/2020 financial year.
The CSOs, under the Tax Justice Alliance Uganda, an umbrella group that bring together CSOs involved in tax work, that most of the measures are not pro-economic growth and unfair to ordinary Ugandans.
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As a way of improving on tax revenue collections from within the country and widening the tax base, government has come up with a number of tax proposals to be implemented in the 2019/2020 financial year.
These include among others a proposal that requires government institutions and regulatory bodies to issue business licenses to only people with TINs, reduction of capital requirement for foreign investors interested in developing industrial parks from $ 100m to $50m and defining every member of the East African Community as a citizen of Uganda who should pay uniform tax.
But the CSOs say government has to come clear if the tax regime is to benefit all other than fronting investors, some of who, are enjoying long tax holidays.
They challenged the public to hold all those in positions of managing tax revenues accountable in order to provide proper accountability for every tax collected.
In the next financial year, URA has a huge task of collecting over 18 trillion shillings of the 40 trillion budget.
