URA’s big challenges
A NEW team is settling in at the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) as the tax body seeks to reform its operations and a dented public image.
A NEW team is settling in at the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) as the tax body seeks to reform its operations and a dented public image.
The appointment of senior and mid-level managers promises a new beginning.
It appears that the recruitment is the right way to start because it has been rigorous, and it hopefully signals the return of meritocracy, a much undermined ideal in the short but explosive history of the tax body. But well beyond building a team - an essential foundation nonetheless — the new management will find great challenges that should in no way be underestimated.
Within the organisation itself, the management will have to build a culture of integrity. This will have to permeate to the outside, where clients in being prone to under-declaring the value of goods and in dodging taxes entirely, are frequently a cause of corruption.
The URA will also need a much better public relations regime. Often there is frustration when businessmen’s goods get impounded needlessly, when tax remittances are not expedited, when bureaucratic red tape rules.
Ignorance of tax obligations often breeds hostility.
With a disproportionate part of our economy being informal, that is, neither regulated by audited accounts nor by listing at the Registrar of Companies, the URA is in position to influence the widening of the formal sector.
Meeting ever-increasing targets in revenue collection and remittance to the Treasury will ultimately be the yardstick with which this team is judged.
The appointment of senior and mid-level managers promises a new beginning.
It appears that the recruitment is the right way to start because it has been rigorous, and it hopefully signals the return of meritocracy, a much undermined ideal in the short but explosive history of the tax body. But well beyond building a team - an essential foundation nonetheless — the new management will find great challenges that should in no way be underestimated.
Within the organisation itself, the management will have to build a culture of integrity. This will have to permeate to the outside, where clients in being prone to under-declaring the value of goods and in dodging taxes entirely, are frequently a cause of corruption.
The URA will also need a much better public relations regime. Often there is frustration when businessmen’s goods get impounded needlessly, when tax remittances are not expedited, when bureaucratic red tape rules.
Ignorance of tax obligations often breeds hostility.
With a disproportionate part of our economy being informal, that is, neither regulated by audited accounts nor by listing at the Registrar of Companies, the URA is in position to influence the widening of the formal sector.
Meeting ever-increasing targets in revenue collection and remittance to the Treasury will ultimately be the yardstick with which this team is judged.