Tax experts have called on African countries to digitalize revenue administration and collection as businesses continue to shift their activities online amid increasing COVID-19 disruptions across the continents’ economies.
The experts gave the advice on Monday during the sixth African Tax Research Network conference held virtually.
In his remarks at the forum, commissioner-general of the Kenya Revenue Authority, Githii Mburu, noted that COVID-19 challenges had now made it mandatory for the governments to digitalize tax collection.
He said: “The business environment has transformed faster due to modern technology. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced businesses to go online thus tax administrators must align to this change.”
Contributing to the discussions, a tax policy expert from University of Pretoria, South Africa, William McCluskey, pointed out that COVID-19 had created economic headwinds in revenue administration for African countries.
The university don further clarified: “As COVID-19 ravages many countries across the world, properties are becoming empty, landlords are reducing rent and businesses are not making much money leading to low collection of taxes.”
McCluskey maintained that digitalizing tax administration would help governments earn more revenue and by so doing be able to continue with their ongoing economic recovery agenda required to achieve sustainable growth of the economies.
During her comments, Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Lands, Farida Karoney, identified one of the areas digitalization had helped boost tax collection and management in the country as the property sector
She said: “Kenya digitalized its land management system and this has seen revenue collection from land rates and stamp duty grows as the government knows where each property is.”
