Finance Minister Matia Kasaija said the company will start working in July and is expected to help the government realize more revenues from the sector. He urged the Property owners not to feel agitated and think that the government is trying to squeeze them.”
An American company, RippleNami Inc has been contracted to help in the collection of
rental tax in Uganda. The company will identify properties, their owners
and link them to the URA tax identification number system, according to the Ministry of Finance.
In a statement,
the ministry says the company will combine information from various ministries, departments
and agencies (MDAs) for proper identification of individuals and corporations
to determine how much they should pay, and provide a solution to improve income rental tax
compliance, although the exact solution has not been named.
Finance says the “agreement follows
continued tax evasion and under declaration of rental tax income. URA has been
faced with low rental income tax collections over the years.” This is despite the fact that there are
more houses occupied and people are paying rent on them.
Finance Minister Matia Kasaija said the company
will start working in July and is expected to help the government realize more revenues
from the sector. He urged the
Property owners not to feel agitated and think that the government
is trying to squeeze them.”
On its website, the company describes it’s as a
mapping and visualization company that deploys data using blockchain technology. It says it will help in “identifying each country’s citizens, quantifying their collective assets
and enabling a tax collection system through RippleNami’s blockchain platform.”
URA will be the primary
end-user of informati
on and reports generated by the rental
tax compliance system developed by RippleNami, Ministry of Finance says.
The company, according to the Ministry of
Finance, will
identify properties and assign them
geo-addresses in accordance with internationally accepted
standards, link the identified properties to their
owners or the persons who earn income from those properties and
cross match the identified properties and their
ownership with the URA Tax Identification Number (TIN) database.
This will tell whether the individual
or organization has paid the right taxes or not.
