Good morning,
it is 2 days to the start of a new financial year and this translates to:
a) The Kenya Revenue Authority website might be jammed because thousands of Kenyans are trying to file their returns before the deadline.
b) As from next month, new taxes will be imposed.
TAXES
Earlier this year, The finance cabinet secretary had made certain proposals to amend tax laws to increase Value added Tax on certain items. On Tuesday last week, during the Finance bill 2021 2nd hearing, the finance committee rejected the proposal to impose higher taxes on bread, motorcycles, betting and imported jewellery.
The following were the recommendations by the finance committee:
Excise duty on betting reduced from 20% to 7.5%.
20% excise duty on loan related fees and commissions has been approved. This means that from Next month, the cost of loans will rise.
16% VAT on LPG (Liquified petroleum gas) has been approved. This will raise the price of gas by Ksh 350 for the 13 kilogram cooking gas as from next month.
16% VAT on bread and infant powder milk has been rejected.
The 15% excise duty imposed on motorcycles has been rejected. The duty will remain at Sh11,608.23 per unit.
Excise duty on nicotine pouches reduced to ksh 1,200 per kilogram from Ksh 5000 per kilogram.
When was the last time your property was re-painted ?
The Public Health Cap 242 and County by-laws require property owners within the city to repaint their buildings after every two years. The Nairobi Metropolitan Service (NMS) announced last week that property owners had 2 months left to have their buildings repainted.
The Public Health act states that failure to re-paint buildings by property owners attracts a fine not exceeding Ksh 1500 for every day the contravention continues. The NMS had issued the order last year but decided to postpone the deadline by a year due to financial difficulties faced by property owners.
The price of stalled development projects in Kenya
The Kenya Public Expenditure Review published by the World Bank showed that Kenya had 4,000 ongoing projects, many of which are significantly delayed, incomplete or stalled.
The report also revealed that the stalled projects from the year 2000 till date are worth approximately 9 trillion Kenya Shillings. A major percentage of projects were launched after the 2013 elections to fulfil the promise of an ambitious infrastructure.
A major cause of the stall is Kenya’s transition to a devolved government where the County governments failed to allocate funds for projects started during the Mwai Kibaki Era. According to Business Daily, the Treasury secretary announced that upto a third of the stalled projects could be slashed in order to save Sh152.35 billion in public projects’ spending.
Kenya Power launches a self service portal
Last week, Kenya Power announced the launch of a self service portal through their website and through their app “My Power”.
This means that customers can now apply for power connections from their homes. The self service portal is operational and has processed thousands of applications. The portal is expected to drive sales and protect customers from Cartels who ask for payment before processing applications.
The app will also provide the following services:
Reports of power outages in the country.
Prepaid token purchase queries.
submission of meter readings.
WRC Safari Rally Returns to Kenya
19 years, Kenya hosted the WRC Safari Rally that started on Thursday. Hotels in Naivasha were fully booked for the weekend, highlighting the impact of the event to business in Kenya. The Ministry of Sports projects that Sh6 billion will be injected into the economy after the event.
Other ConversationStarters
The Competition authority of Kenya has developed a template for retail and insurance disputes to reduce disputes in delayed payments and unfair termination of contracts by insurers.
IMF (International Monetary Funds) has released funds, 407 million dollars, to support the Kenyan economy. The IMF requires the government of Kenya to reveal the names of secret investors in the firms involved in the Covid-19 embezzlement scandal.
A KSh1 billion cruise ship terminal in Mombasa county has been completed and will go a long way to attract more cruise ships and promote tourism in the Country.
