By Kamugisha Kabahweza
The Uganda Revenue Authority has noted that there is a lot of data in Uganda that research has obtained, though it is underutilized.
Speaking at the dissemination of two research papers at the Protea Hotel Kampala on Wednesday, the Commissioner for Information Technology and Innovations, Robert Mutebi, said that Uganda has a lot of data that the country is only learning to structure in order to derive insights that inform decisions.
“We have a lot of data and we are only learning how to structure it. We are building infrastructure for that and investing quite a lot of money into this effort now. But we need to be able to again move beyond just having the data to derive insights that inform decisions everywhere and in real-time,” said Mutebi.
He applauded UNUWIDER for collaborating with URA to establish a research lab that was launched in May 2022.
“My joy is that you are supporting us to build the right pipelines for this economic data that could be reused for different purposes. We think that it can help not only URA but also the Bank of Uganda, the Ministry of Finance, and the National Planning Authority,” he emphasized.
Mutebi added that URA is leveraging the opportunities for research with various partners to get insights that can inform policy and administrative reforms, thus impacting taxpayer compliance and revenue mobilization.
URA Supervisor Research and Revenue Modelling, Nicholas Musoke, presented a research paper titled “Did Uganda’s corporate tax incentives benefit the Ugandan economy or only the firms?” in which he said that most entrepreneurs have not taken advantage of the incentives while large firms have greatly benefited. He revealed, however, that tax holidays in 2021 led to the foregoing of revenue amounting to UGX 156B.
“Our findings indicate that the revenue forgone due to special tax holidays varies throughout the sample period, and in 2021, this amount stood at UGX156 billion, equivalent to approximately 0.11 percent,” said Musoke.
The research associate at Overseas Development Institute (ODI), Kyle McNabb, presented a research paper titled “Compliance rates with local and national business taxes,” in which he observed that there is a high rate of tax non-compliance among businesses in Kampala and large corporate firms.
“We found that only a modest proportion of corporate businesses in Kampala consistently filed national business taxes. The aggregated estimated revenue loss to KCCA due to this prevalent non-compliance is estimated at more than UGX9 billion in 2022,” said McNabb.
He advised that fighting tax non-compliance in Uganda requires policy adjustments as well as a systemic and coordinated effort across multiple levels of tax authorities.
