By Kiyimba Bruno
Civil societies have expressed various ways of how Uganda can widen its tax base.
While in a meeting at Hotel Africana, Mayanja Musa, one of the key panelists believes that many people in the country do not want to pay taxes.
In his view, Mayanja was keen on the growing number of investors in the country who stay on a short note due to the quality o services earned when they reach in Uganda.
On this note he said that there are more reasons beyond taxation that can attract investors to the country to enable them stay comfortably.
“Tax evasion in Uganda is higher than any of the East African countries. So why do we improve the quality of services to our investors so that Uganda can get higher income?” Asked Musa.
He went ahead to mention corruption as one of the big grievances that are reducing Uganda’s taxes due to the fact that it is a disease that has eaten most of the big offices in the nation.
On registration of firms, he noted that Uganda is still leading in the East African Community on owning the biggest number of unregistered firms, an incident that had reduced the level of its tax base.
On the other hand however, Eliot Tumwijukye, the vice chairperson at Civil Society Advocacy Group believes that the 116billionshs revenue for the last quarter of the Financial Year of 2017 is an increasing concern for the country’s expenditure.
She advised that Uganda should draw lessons from other country’s experiences to make it move forward in terms of performance.
Here Civil Societies highlighted on a few ways of how to increase Uganda’s tax base. They believe that Uganda has to strengthen its auditing process to enable it to push the messages to any tax evedors that the nation is serious about tax compliance.
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