This archive report was first published on 24 September 2019.
On September 24, 2019, the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) announced plans to monitor Mpesa transactions in a bid to catch tax cheats.
According to The Star, KRA suspects that some taxpayers who receive their income through mobile money and other online cash transfer platforms have been dodging taxes.
The taxman will match the transactions with the returns made by individual taxpayers to establish whether the figures are consistent.
KRA is also targeting foreign companies that operate digitally in Kenya but have no physical addresses in the country, including Facebook, Twitter, Uber, and Amazon.
KRA Commissioners Joseline Ogai and Maurice Orei explained that the agency has embarked on data matching in an increasingly digital economy.
"We are taking data matching very seriously as our next frontier in digital revenue monitoring," Ogai said. "Soon, we will be able to catch tax cheats who make nil or few entries in their tax filings, yet the money they generate online is high."
"You cannot say you file less in returns but the amount of money you handle in your M-Pesa, may be generated from your side hustles, is high and you are not declaring," Ogai added.
Commissioner Orei said KRA is working on a plan to appoint tax representatives abroad to assist it with collecting revenues for companies that operate in Kenya but have no physical addresses.
