By Joachim Twino
To area Masaka Municipality MP Mathias Mpuuga, the large crowd that turned up for the stakeholders’ engagement meeting is indicative of how committed the Masaka business community members are to loyally paying their taxes.
We are talking about the stakeholder engagement session that the URA top leadership held on Thursday at Maria Flo Hotel which is Masaka’s leading recreation facility for such meetings.
The URA team was led by Commissioner General Dorris Akol whose entourage arrived moments after 11am for the very interactive meeting that went on up to a few minutes to 4pm.
Organizers must have adequately invested in mobilization because by 9am the meeting hall was filled to capacity and additional chairs had to be improvised and permission sought from the Hotel management to permit several hundreds of people to follow the proceedings from outside the meeting hall.
One could easily mistake people in the overflow for another meeting simultaneously taking place. Yet they were very enthusiastic and keenly followed proceedings inside the hall through the public address system.
The arrival of Masaka’s highly revered Catholic Bishop JB Kaggwa underlined the importance Greater Masaka business, political and opinion leaders attached to this URA engagement meeting.
Kaggwa, who oversees several key Catholic Church projects that are top on URA’s area taxpayers list, didn’t say anything. He preferred to listen and learn from submissions made by the business and political leaders. He stopped at leading a short prayer and listened until he left for other equally important engagements.
WHO SAID WHAT
Many things were said during the engagement and we shall highlight a few submissions to capture the mood at the meeting.
Mathias Mpuuga commended the tax system for prudently reducing the Withholding Tax on agriculture-related transactions from 6% to mere 1% but lamented that more constraining tax obligations had been introduced by the minister.
“This reduction in Withholding Tax is a good move especially for us as Masaka people because we are chiefly agriculturalists,” Mpuuga said in Luganda, the language in which the entire meeting was conducted because it’s in wide usage by Masaka business community.
Mpuuga also wondered why Akol-led URA doesn’t deepen synergies and cooperation with sister government agencies like UNBS which often confiscates traders’ merchandise for destruction calling it counterfeit.
Mpuuga said this practice is intriguing because the same merchandise will already have been cleared and subjected to huge taxes by URA.
Calling it double loss for the business community, Mpuuga attracted endless applause when he emphasized this point because it had equally been raised by many earlier speakers.
Speaking later on, Akol acknowledged the public disappointment was justified and URA would take the initiative to work with UNBS and other government agencies more closely since they all serve the same government.
Mpuuga also commended URA for extending an invitation to Bishop Kaggwa because through organizations like MADDO, the prelate is greatly impacting on the tax base in Greater Masaka where MADDO finances many farming initiatives and thereby increasing the volume of taxable activities.
Mpuuga also called on URA to prioritize sensitizing the Masaka people about rental tax which he said was creating a lot of discontentment because many landlords feel URA begins collecting it prematurely. “Imagine somebody borrows from the bank to put up rentals but before they even finish repaying the bank loan and begin making some money themselves, URA comes and begins reaping before the owner even enjoys anything,” Mpuuga said attracting applause.
ESTIMATED ASSESSMENTS
As if to emphasis how important it was, countless speakers bashed URA for not taxing them equitably. Specifically they were unhappy having their tax obligations determined basing on estimated assessment approach. This, they said, has often resulted into some tax payers being over taxed and others undertaxed.
BLESSING 4 AKOL
Intriguing as it seemed, this much repeated complaint was an opportunity for Akol to pass on very important tax education information.
She explained that some of the tax-paying business community members get inconvenienced having to pay penalty, top up or even higher demurrage because of over reliance on clearing agents who sometimes engage in fraudulent falsification of information relating to certain consignments.
She advised that the only sure way to avoid one’s tax obligation being determined through estimated assessment, businesses must invest in record keeping and file returns every 3 or 6 months as required by law so as to enable URA assess them more accurately.
She clarified that URA isn’t necessarily excited assessing people through estimates but this is resorted to after failing to have any other option. “That’s where keeping business records becomes very important otherwise URA will end up estimating the turnover of the business basing on that of others doing similar trade in the same locality,” repeatedly explained Akol whose flawless Luganda wowed many at the meeting.
She also revealed URA is open to helping those having difficulties filing returns. She also advised business people to ensure the quality of goods whose importation they are paying for has been ascertained and confirmed to be good enough to avoid the same being intercepted by UNBS. She maintained this was extremely necessary even when URA will endeavor to collaborate with UNBS more closely.
In response to a request that had raised earlier by the bosses of Cotton Foundation which she visited earlier on her way to the meeting, Akol said their mother Finance Ministry would consider exemptions on water tanks.
The Cotton Foundation bosses (who Akol visited to appreciate their efforts to enhance tax compliance by insisting on dealing with only service providers and suppliers who are tax-compliant) have for the last many years been spending millions of dollars on building water infrastructure for schools in the Greater Masaka area.
Minister Vincent Sempijja, who represented VP Edward Sekandi, commended URA for priotising the Greater Masaka business community. He specifically appreciated the approach of stakeholder engagement meetings saying it was the best way to demystify phobias people always have towards tax matters.
He said the fantastic job URA has done is the reason lots of infrastructure continues to be built including roads and dams.
Sempijja added that the same taxes collected by URA is what government would use to inject Shs17bn into the restoration of Masaka Cooperative Union on top of constructing the pineapple and mangoes’ processing plant to enable area farmers go into value addition.
Another speaker was area RDC Herman Sentongo who read out his phone number and also thanked the Masaka business community members for religiously paying their taxes.
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