KRA has established that businesses are now ditching mobile payment( Use of pay bills, till numbers and pochi la biashara) and reverting to cash transactions.
The new trend has been seen as a new trick by business to avoid paying taxes.
The change of behaviour was witnessed after the tax man enhanced compliance checks in major towns by deploying 1, 400 revenue service assistants whose duties are to enhance tax compliance among business owners and facilitate online registration of businesses.
“It is already noted that [closure of Lipa Na M-Pesa merchant accounts] is what is happening in the market. We are working on strategies on how we can work around this,”KRA’s chief manager Caroline Rotich said as quoted by the Business Daily.
According to her, KRA is working with Safaricom to identify those who have opted out of the Lipa Na Mpesa provisions in a bid to establish those who are evading taxes.
“Working together with Safaricom to facilitate with integration, we will get information on these drop-outs so that from there we can do follow-ups and compliance checks. We have several officers now who are doing compliance checks around the main towns. This will help us address this issue,” Rotich added.
