Revealed: KRA only taxed half of Chinese imports last year
Chinese imports valued at Sh431.9 billion for the first 10 months of last year are missing from official data reported by the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), raising concerns over the scale of tax evaded in the election year.
An analysis of official trade data published separately by the two countries' tax authorities has revealed a wide disparity in the value of imports from the Asian economic giant.
Official KRA data, as published by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), placed the value of imports from China at Sh377.5 billion in the review period.
However, the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China (GACC), which is the equivalent of KRA, says on its website that the goods exported from China to Kenya during this period were valued at Sh809.4 billion — more than twice the figure given by the KRA.
This huge variation is also likely to bring into question the amount of taxes collected on imports from the world’s second-largest economy, as goods shipped into the country attract a myriad of levies, including import duty, value-added tax (VAT), excise duty, import declaration fees (IDF) and the railway development levy (RDL). BY DAILY NATION
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