By Immaculate Wanyenze
URA has taken a significant step towards promoting tax compliance and acknowledging the contribution of compliant taxpayers towards national development. Recently, the URA Management team held week-long engagements in West Nile, Mbarara Hoima and Mbale, bringing together political leaders, business leaders and community leaders.
The Commissioner General, John R. Musinguzi emphasized the importance of encouraging tax compliance, simplifying the tax payment process, clarifying tax obligations and ensuring transparency in revenue collection.
“By focusing on encouraging tax compliance, we will demystify paying tax, what taxes to pay and create transparency in revenue collection,” he said.
These initiatives and more are part of the many routine stakeholder engagements URA carries out to strengthen its relations and information sharing with partners as well as build increased awareness of service offerings.
For Robert Kalumba, the Assistant Commissioner Public & Corporate Affairs, these engagements are part of the Taxpayer Appreciation Season.
“URA has been appreciating taxpayers for the last 18 years, building public confidence and fostering continued compliance. Our goal is to bring the taxman closer to the taxpayer to mobilise support for Uganda ‘s development,” he explained.
Kalumba also noted that the regional engagements will culminate in the highly anticipated Taxpayers Appreciation Awards ceremony scheduled for December 11th 2024 at URA head office in Nakawa.
The ceremony will recognise and reward outstanding taxpayers who have demonstrated exceptional compliance and contributed to revenue growth.
During the engagements, taxpayers raised concerns about integrity, corruption, smuggling, high-handedness of URA officials, lack of transparency in tax assessments and delays in tax refund processes.
URA acknowledged these concerns and assured taxpayers of its commitment to addressing some of the issues raised by increasing taxpayer education and awareness and improving transparency in tax processes. On smuggling, taxpayers were encouraged to report to URA all suspicious trade practices in their areas to enable URA create a level trading ground for all legitimate traders.
For any corruption practices, irregularities, high handedness or other wrongdoings related to URA operations, the taxpayers were asked to report to the URA official contact details while ensuring protection of whistle blowers.
Meanwhile, the task of collecting enough revenue requires productive partnerships for Uganda to achieve full service delivery and economic independence. To this end, URA has continued to engage various taxpayer segments, listening to their challenges and addressing their concerns.
Beyond engaging stakeholders, URA conducts special taxpayer visits scheduled to keep abreast with clients’ issues at their business premises. The tax advisory visits seek to sensitise taxpayers about new processes and systems and also address specific issues relating to compliance. These visits also enable the tax body to keep abreast with the dynamic business environment and clients are able to share useful feedback about the quality of our services for continuous improvement. URA leverages these engagements as best practices to model as an exemplary institution in terms of tax processes, systems and human capital.
