KRA starts lifestyle audit on staff to seal revenue leakages

The Kenya Revenue Authority has started a lifestyle audit on its staff beginning with the most vulnerable departments.

The taxman has already presented data and files of 70 senior managers to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) as part of the vetting process.

The lifestyle audit is expected to seal revenue leakages by weeding out corrupt officials.

The audit comes a time when KRA is 69 billion shillings behind its third quarter revenue target.

According to KRA Director General John Njiraini, all its 5,000 workers will undergo the lifestyle audit.

In February 2016, four Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) officers were arraigned at the Milimani Law Courts, Nairobi, for allegedly perpetrating tax evasion related crimes.

The officers, who were also suspended from the Authority, were formerly attached to the KRA Customs and Border Control Division in Mombasa.

The four are currently on suspension for allegedly abetting tax evasion vices at the Portside and Autoport Container Freight Stations in Mombasa.

This came just a day after National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich admitted that a lot of revenue is lost to leakages during revenue collection by the KRA and thus costing the economy billions.

The CS, however, assured Kenyans that this was being addressed through ongoing reforms at KRA.

Rotich indicated that the government was re-organizing the revenue collector’s administration to get rid of corrupt officials among other measures meant to raise revenue collection.

In November 2015, the KRA launched a campaign to encourage people to report evasion and to crack down on staff misconduct.

The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) said it would vet staff for misconduct and step up efforts to prevent abuses when calculating customs charges.

“KRA welcomes public scrutiny into tax administration operations, including the conduct of its staff,” the authority said in a statement, adding it had a web-based system to receive information from the public on “tax evasion and corruption”.