TAX JUSTICE
According to economists, tax is a non-penal, yet compulsory transfer of resources from the private to the public sector levied on a basis of predetermined criteria and without reference to specific benefit received. It is a pecuniary burden imposed on all taxpayers, of which failure to remit is punishable by law.
However many of the financial and social elite have seen it fit to be above the law and reproach via tax avoidance, evasion and havens. This is a key driver of vast inequality as the rich transfer taxable income to ‘offshore accounts’ and hire ingenious lawyers to bar them from enduring the consequences of this. Then the irony of it is- the issue of income inequality is often discussed by tax avoiders. They persuade the policymakers to devise rules that enable them to get around the taxes that pay for the infrastructure and services we all- and they all- rely on.
The end tax haven campaign sites that while over 100 million children never get the opportunity to go to school; developing countries lose more money through tax dodging than they receive in aid. Kenya has been recently named as a tax haven due to a supposed lax tax regime. Hypothetically I would say this is because high income earners are not taxed as high- in my opinion- as they should be. As for low income earners, struggling with the bare necessities, the little they earn is turned into a more meager amount after tax. Evidently there’s a glitch in the setting of priorities.
More importantly is how the taxes paid are spent. Effective January 1 this year, lottery winners are required to surrender a fifth of their earnings to The Kenya revenue authority as stipulated by the finance act (2013). I understand the intention of increasing tax base and the need to make progress in a declining national income, but we must first scrutinize current spending before creating new revenue avenues. For example, when you have a near 2 Billion paid out to ‘ghost workers’, clearly there’s...