He is nowhere in your top 1000 taxpayers, not even close to the biggest business owners in the country but he chose the phrase, “I encourage you to pay tax. Avoid sections 200/203.” These words should ring a bell to any social media user in Uganda but if they don’t, it is clear you missed the truck. For the last seven days, social media has been awash with a photo from an unknown source and location of a truck with words encouraging people to pay tax.
To some that saw the photo “URA is taking this tax education gem too far” and to others “who is this calling URA to their door?”. This provoked the Public and Corporate Affairs Division to hunt down this tax ambassador and yes we found him!! The ‘culprit’ is Hajji Suleiman Bateganya, a businessman from Iganga.
Bateganya has been in the business arena since 1982 with his first dealings in bales of cloth. At first he was going about his trade without any formalization and the war insurgence made smuggling and ‘small pocket talk’ with officers’ legal’.so taxes were easy to get by. In 1986 he diversified into importing raw materials used in making bags and shoes, this business continued to grow even at the inception of URA in 1991.
A few years on, URA began to bite on smuggling. A youthful Bateganya saw how his friends were kicked out of business because manipulation of customs processes. The law he quotes on his truck relates to penalties stipulated in the East African Community Customs Management Act (EACCMA) regarding restricted goods, false declarations, fraud and alterations. Bategaya says that he has seen many businessmen including those he admired fall from glory because of the penalties attracted by customs offences.
