URA leverages stakeholder relations to ease tax compliance 

The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) has intensified its deliberate efforts of improving tax compliance and adopting modern and innovative mechanisms aimed at ultimately reducing donor dependence. 

For example, the URA Corporate Plan 2020/21-2024/25 has been designed and premised on the need to promote an engaged citizenry to enhance voluntary compliance by building a taxpaying culture, building productive partnerships, leveraging technology, data and innovative staff.

Through improved working relationships with the stakeholders, URA has embarked on a total transformative drive with the ultimate objective of making taxpayers voluntarily contribute to total revenue collections.

The commissioner general, John R. Musinguzi has already met with various dealer associations and suppliers including gold dealers, vehicle dealers, Uganda Bankers Association as well as the Uganda Manufacturers Association. All these engagements were aimed at developing a working memorandum of understanding geared towards improving the country’s revenue base.

Additionally, the ongoing Tujenge Bus drives in the different regions is also part of URA’s tax education initiatives aimed at bringing services closer to the taxpayers. Through Tujenge, URA is also able to interest clients in paying taxes through simplified tax literature.

Beyond engaging stakeholders, URA has continued to deliver services to taxpayers including; tax clinics, special taxpayer visits scheduled to keep abreast with clients’ issues at their business premises. The tax advisory visits aimed at sensitizing taxpayers about new processes and systems and addressing specific issues relating to compliance.

Senior management staff are usually at the forefront of the visits which are conducted on a scheduled basis. These visits also create a closer touch to taxpayer issues which the bigger engagements may not address.

“Through these engagements, URA keeps abreast with the dynamic business environment and clients are able to share useful feedback about the quality of our services for continuous improvement,” James Abola the assistant commissioner compliance explained during a mid-western stakeholder integrity forum.

URA has also hosted a total of 18 benchmarks within the country, at regional as well as international levels. These benchmarks are a testament to URA‘s best practices and model institution in terms of its tax processes, systems and human capital.

Since one of the main challenges of compliance or tax morale, today is the lack of tax education, URA has understood the pains that affect taxpayer behaviours and attitudes and has tailored information according to the respective needs of segmenting taxpayers.

Taxpayers are therefore encouraged to partner with URA to augment avenues for continued engagement, feedback gathering and where necessary appropriate additional networks. The information shared will support URA in designing solutions that will build business capacity and the ability for every taxpayer to contribute their fair share of the revenue.