| TRA decries lack of awareness | Send to a friend |
| Wednesday, 22 February 2012 22:16 |
|
The Citizen Reporter Dar es Salaam. Lack of awareness on taxation matters is one of the major drawbacks to revenue collection in the country, according to the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA).That revelation was one of the highlights of a contractors workshop that was held in Dar es Salaam, whose participants were told that, up to August last year, only 883,656 taxpayers and 17,233 VAT taxpayers were registered. Tanzania has a population of more than 40 million people.“The biggest aim of facilitating this workshop is to increase tax awareness among contractors as one of the measures the revenue authority has taken to increase responsiveness among Tanzanians,” said Yeremiah Mbaghi from the TRA taxpayer education department. Mr Mbaghi stressed that contractors, like other Tanzanians, are obliged to pay taxes so as to boost revenue collections in the country.The construction sector contributes three percent of domestic revenue and it contributes two per cent of the total tax revenue collected by TRA annually. Drawing comparisons between Tanzania and China, Mr Mbaghi said that, in 2009 TRA collected Sh4.04 trillion ($2.5 billion) while China collected Yuan 6.31 trillion ($924 billion).Commenting on the issue, Kainda Evarist, an auditor with D.B Shapriya and Company Limited, said many Tanzanians are not engaged in activities that contribute to national income. “If you visit highly populated areas in Tanzania like Ubungo one will find that, a good number of young people are doing nothing which can contribute to government revenue,” Mr Evarist noted. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
