Uasin Gishu plans to raise about Ksh2.7 billion in revenues after updating the data of business owners within the county in its digital tax collection system called Sisibo Pay.
According to Uasin Gishu Governor Jonathan Bii, this move will have a profound impact on the county’s ability to collect taxes for financing public expenditures for sustainable economic and social development.
He was speaking on Monday during the flagging off of 310 enumerators and 85 supervisors, part of the tax administration that targets to register and license over 80,000 businesses on Sisibo Pay.
“Apart from Uasin Gishu being a farmers’ Town, we also have business from small traders to big traders, and all of us have equal chances of doing business,” he said, calling for maximum cooperation from the business community.
On his part, David Kebenei, the County Director in charge of business licensing, pointed out that the Sisibo Pay update will address the challenges of domestic revenue mobilization by reducing tax avoidance practices since it was last updated in 2015 and a majority of the businesses were not captured in the system.
He noted that new licenses for 2024 will be issued when the exercise is complete after five days.
“We realized that as we issue single business permits, there has been unfairness in distribution, and it is not intentional but because of the lack of data,” Mr Kebenei stated.
The update of this revenue management system holds the promise of shoring up public finances as the County Government of Uasin Gishu seeks to fully digitize its tax collection initiatives.
With Sisibo Pay, the county government will know how much businesses raise as taxes every day, and to reduce avoidance, it will mark the Geographic Information System location of these businesses to minimize revenue losses.
