Lands CS Farida Karoney has said the reform agenda will expand the government’s tax collection base.
The CS said that the reform process engenders the values of integrity, transparency, accountability, and equality with respect to land transactions, access to information, and administration of fiscal politics in the context of land-based taxation regimes.
She was speaking during the 6th African Tax Research Network (ATRN) congress that was held virtually on Monday.
The government has already designed and implemented the National Land Information Management System (NLIMS), also known as Ardhisasa as part of reforms.
“Implementation of the National Land Information Management System is a bold step by the Government of Kenya to move away from manual paper-based systems that are susceptible to wear and tear of land records, time wastage, corruption, low productivity, poor integration with other public sector agencies and distortion of the land market operations,” she said.
The CS added that digitising land transactions will make it easy to document the rights and obligations of land and property owners as well as investors in the lands sector.
“With the integration of the digital records and the data relating to registration of persons and businesses, it becomes very easy to expand the tax base through the capture of more properties into the system.”
Karoney said that the digitisation of the land and property market system presents the opportunity for tax administration regimes to:
- a) Exponentially expand the tax-bases;
- b) Enhance revenue collection;
- c) Improve efficiency in enforcement and compliance;
- d) Reduce tax evasion;
- e) Reduce the cost of tax collection and other administrative structures;
- f) Improve tracking, reporting, forecasting, and decision making.
She said that digitisation of land records and land transactions will simplify and reduce the cost of tax compliance, allow for real-time decision making, reduce incidents of tax errors and provide an avenue for ease of communication with the tax administration authorities.
