President William Ruto in his maiden address to parliament since being sworn in as the fifth president has proposed wide sweeping changes to the tax body, the Kenya Revenue Authority.

The president pledged to revamp the KRA to make it tax friendly and to place the welfare of  Kenyans at the center of its operations. He even proposed a name change to Kenya Revenue Services (KRS)

“We will also work with the Kenya Revenue Authority on a culture change to make it a people-friendly, customer-centric organization. I am of the view that we should rename it the Kenya Revenue Service in line with the proposed transformation.” Said the head of state.

The president also added that the taxing system has to be equitable, efficient and simple. Dr Ruto wants the tax body to keep in line with economic principles of equitable taxation that require that the tax burden reflects ability to pay. The president further noted that, the tax burden should follow a hierarchy whereby wealth should be taxed more, followed by consumption and then businesses to be taxed less.

“We are over-taxing trade and under-taxing wealth. We will be proposing tax measures that begin to move us in the right direction,” he said.

This comes even at a time when the tax body collected an all-time high revenue and surpassed the Sh2 trillion revenue collection mark, defying the difficult economic environment brought about by Covid-19. Revenue collection in the financial year 2021/22, which ended on June 30, reached a new record of Sh2.031trillion compared to Sh1.669 trillion collected in the financial year 2020/21.

KRA is also mandated to collect revenue on behalf of other government agencies mainly at the ports of entry. These include Road Maintenance Levy, Airport Revenue, Aviation Revenue and Petroleum Development Fund.