The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) 2nd Annual Tax Summit is being held at the Kenyatta International Convention Center (KICC) from the 17th-19th of October 2016 focusing on the theme “ Kenya’s Solutions to Kenya’s challenges – Taxation as a catalyst for Economic Development”.

Of great importance is how KRA can use ICT to enforce tax payment compliance, reconcile tax collection through proper processes to promote transparency and enhance accountability.

Speaking at the Strategy launch on behalf of the ICT Cabinet Secretary, ICT Secretary, Dr. Kate Getao said that IT stakeholders’ participation from across Africa is very important and that deliberations and discussions at the Summit should be aimed at making the Tax Authority better in terms of service delivery.

She suggested that the KRA should be seamless speaking to the tax payers and the relevant systems e.g. telephones and that tax collection and remittance should be painless in terms of security and costs. Tax payment should be universal with all citizens fulfilling their part in the taxation process.

Tax collection should be made friendly, easy and traceable whereby tax payers have knowledge of what their taxes do. Collection of tax should be transparent and used effectively to benefit wananchi. The government must therefore, demonstrate care and benefit of tax collection for the common good.

Leveraging various technology platforms to improve tax collection and delivery is in line with our Constitution and Dr. Getao noted that it can help in propelling Kenya to achieve our vision 2030 and that use of analytical data will make KRA faster, efficient and effective in their services with better outcome.