By Joshua Niyonshima
URA has called on Government Ministries, Agencies and Departments to be at the forefront of tax compliance by allowing system-to-system integration under the Electronic Fiscal Receipting and Invoicing Solution (EFRIS). This will ease exchange of information and ensure accurate reporting on financial activities done by government agencies, the authority says.
A system-to-system connection is the integration of a taxpayer’s invoicing system with EFRIS to generate e-receipts and invoices via a Web Service Application Programming Interface connection.
Speaking at a workshop organized by Bank of Uganda Speke Resort Munyonyo, the Ag. Commissioner General URA, Robert Mutebi said that the status quo with only 83 out of 166 agencies integrated with URA is causing a shortfall in data.
“Let us allow system-to-system integration or enroll our entities on URA portal. Today 23 of 23 Ministries are integrated, 83 out of 166 agencies have integrated with us and 13 out of 13 government universities have a system to system integration. This shows a gap in agencies thus a shortfall in data that may lead to inefficiency,” he said.
Still on payments, URA explained that when MDA’s pay taxes, they are notified of their total collections every 20th day of the quarter.
“When we talk of revenue collected from each MDA, we mean the value that is appearing on the Bank of Uganda Account. The money may be there but still under processing therefore cannot be reported on,” Busingye Kelemensio Manager revenue collection explained.
On their part, agencies and local governments resolved on a need to obey data protocols and organizational procedures to avoid data breaches and quality issues.
The workshop which was organized under the theme; “Automation in government: Harnessing regulation in technology to improve the customer experience” attracted accounting officers from MDA’s, Government ministries and Local governments.
