Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) has collected 1.032 trillion/- in revenue last month, surpassing its target of 1.025 trillion/-

 
 TRA Commissioner General (CG), Mr Alphayo Kidata, said here yesterday that the collection is 100.7 per cent of the target, attributing the success to different efforts to plug loopholes through which tax was evaded.

Mr Kidata said collections for a period of 11 months, from July 2015 to May 2016 amounts to 11.956tri/-, one and the same to 99.2 per cent of the targeted amount that is 12.054 for Tanzania Mainland and Zanzibar.

“TRA has set effective targets to increase revenue collection in the remaining one month so as to beat or go beyond the set mark, whereby we have significantly progressed to combat smuggling, especially on the Indian Ocean Coast and all the borders, deal with traders who evade paying taxes and defaulters who do not use Electronic Fiscal Device (EFD) machines.

He added; “We will deal with challenges facing us to reach the target. We have also taken disciplinary action against unethical employees as well as improve taxpaying systems that would make it easy in transacting while voluntarily paying tax”.

The CG stressed the need for traders and the general public to be patriotic by issuing and demanding EFD receipts once they sell or buy goods and services to boost revenue collection.

In implementing a directive issued by President John Magufuli to supply EFDs free of charge to sections of businesspeople, Mr Kidata said the initial 5,703 units have been allocated to small and medium traders in Dar es Salaam Region.

“TRA has started allocation of EFD machines to 5,703 traders with sales ranging from 14m/- to 20m/- per annum.

The said traders are supposed to call at TRA offices in the districts where they pay tax – Ilala, Kinondoni and Temeke -- to verify their Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) registration so that we could correct then database.

After that, traders get permission to be supplied with the EFDs, an exercise that started on June 1,” said the commissioner general.