An interesting article on BD :
Parliament’s Budget Office (PBO) says the answer lies in Kenya’s large and rapidly expanding underground or grey economy that is never captured in official data but now accounts for nearly half of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. Kenya’s underground economy has expanded rapidly in the past five years to become a mammoth Sh825 billion industry that is denying the government at least Sh275 billion in uncollected revenues, the PBO says. This means Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) is tapping only half of the estimated Sh750 billion tax revenues potential, leaving those already in the tax bracket with the heavy burden of financing public services and ultimately economic growth and effectively means the national economy is nearly twice the current estimate of Sh1.6 trillion.
The underground economy – commonly defined as commercial transactions that go unreported or unrecorded for tax purposes – has traditionally been made up of hawkers, small-scale farmers, carpenters, dressmakers, watchmen, construction workers and domestic workers (maids and gardeners).
In the past couple of years however, the real estate and agriculture sectors have attracted big money without a commensurate rise in tax revenues raising doubts on the effectiveness of the revenue collection machinery.
_______________________________________________
Skunkworks mailing list
Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke
http://lists.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks
------------
Skunkworks Rules
http://my.co.ke/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=94
------------
Other services @ http://my.co.ke