Kenya Revenue Authority has issued a stern warning to tax evaders saying it is going to take tough measures on them this financial year.
KRA Deputy Commissioner for Investigations and Enforcement Dr Edward Karanja on Wednesday said they have decided to criminalise those who evade tax as part of the global practice.
The prosecution will be guided by investigations to enhance voluntary tax compliance.
This will be carried out across the five KRA centres of Nairobi, Central, Mombasa, Western and Rift Valley.
In the last financial year ending June2018, KRA prosecuted 223 individuals and expect to prosecute other 600 this year.
"We are sure we will recover tax revenue from over 95 per cent prosecutions," Karanja said.
The exchequer estimates to collect Sh15 billion in this 2019/2020 year up from Sh10hrough the Investigations, Prosecution and Publicity (IPP) strategy. and Sh5 billion collected in 2018/19 and 2017/2018 respectively through the Investigations, Prosecution and Publicity (IPP) strategy.
Karanja added that they working with 11 prosecutors given by Director of Criminal Investigations.
In the 2018/2019, the tax authority collected Sh1.58 trillion, 11.8 per cent growth from Sh1.43 trillion in the previous year.
KRA attributed this to some initiatives including implementation of ICMs, integrated cargo scanning solutions, regional electronic cargo tracking system to reduce cargo diversion and uptake of iTax system that has increased tax base.
Last year the tax base increased to Sh8million from Sh6.7 million in the previous year.
Some of the tax heads that drove the growth include VAT that grew by 9.8 per cent despite a high average inflation rate of 7.2 per cent.
Corporate tax and customs duty also pushed the rise in revenue.
However, excise duty on oil imports experienced a low performance by 18.6 per cent due to a decline in petrol volumes in June.
Excise taxes on domestic goods also decline by 4.0 per cent due to a decline in volumes of goods consumed.
