The Kenya Revenue Authority board has directed its staff to immediately clear a backlog of pending 71, 680 tax compliant certificates (TCCs).
Officials at the Times Towers told the Star that the Commissioner for Domestic Taxes Elizabeth Meyo has also cautioned her staff that late filing penalties for assessment periods beyond five years are not chargeable under the law.
"Currently, there are 58, 018 tasks pending at recommendation stage and 13, 662 task pending at approval stage,” Meyo said in a memo.
The memo dated 13 December, has been copied to all commissioners and heads of departments at the Times Tower.
“The staff will not be allowed to proceed on any leave unless they clear any pending tax compliant certificate task,” the memo said.
The commissioner asked the officers to limit the compliance validation period to five years. She said in the memo that officers should not deny employees TCCs on account of outstanding reconciliation issues arising from respective employers.
“There has been growing complaints from the public on time to process TCCs, which should ideally take no longer than 5 working days,” Meyo said.
A KRA staffer told the Star that the board was concerned at the rate at which the staff was handling the tax compliance processing exercise.
Meyo said the staff should not deny TCCs on the basis of compliance issues affecting periods beyond the year of income 2014. He said, this, however, does not mean that assessed debts owed for prior periods are not recoverable.
“Processing officers are therefore advised to validate outstanding payments from returns filed (where tax due is at least NIL as per return) and not from one’s iTax ledger or payment screen,” Meyo said.
She said TCC processing will be monitored daily and the rate of processing the same will be appraised at the end of the second quarter of the financial year.
