The Kenya Revenue Authority is set to roll out a programme that will see mobile money transaction taxed.
According to KRA commissioner, John Njiraini, the authority is at an advanced stage of rolling out a number crunching mechanism that will use electronic data to suggest incomes of those using mobile money to pay bills and make purchases.
“We plan to focus on merchant transactions before moving to other mobile money transactions," said Njiraini.
The taxman is targeting mobile money as part of the agency's financial gathering scheme that is meant to monitor businesses and individuals who are not paying their fair share of taxes. KRA will initially use the more than 36, 000 active till numbers to monitor individual transactions going by the latest official data that Safaricom released in November.
The move will affect both individual and companies’ mobile money transaction records in a move that is intended to open a new front in the fight against tax cheats The initiative has, however, received criticism from some quarters .
Critics urge that while the plan is well intended, it may end up killing the growth of the banking and mobile money penetration even as it exposes institutions to lots of ligation.