President William Ruto’s senior economic advisor Moses Kuria now says that his earlier remarks on M-Pesa paybills being converted to Electronic tax receipts (ETR) by December were mistaken.
In a clarification on X, Kuria said the directive will not only affect M-Pesa, but all payment service providers, including banks. He went on to say that this is not only an M-Pesa issue but an industry issue.
“My attention has been drawn to media reports that my comments on Virtual ETRs at the KRA Summit yesterday were directed at MPESA only. This is erroneous as I meant all Payment Service Providers including Telcos and Banks. It’s an industry issue,” Kuria said.He further noted that the government will soon start blocking phones that will have been imported into the country without paying the applicable taxes.
“Just like we will automatically block from activating on any network any mobile phone imported into the country with no record of having paid applicable taxes. Be guided accordingly.”
Kuria had noted that the move would help weed out tax evaders and help boost the collection of billions of shillings in taxes. It also targets traders who rely on mobile money platforms to do business.
Currently, out of the over two million companies using mobile pay bill services, only 200,000 are registered with physical ETRs.
Kuria added that this will initially focus on businesses earning more than Sh5 million in annual sales.
“We’ve agreed with the Commissioner-General that come Christmas 2024, all paybills will also be virtual ETRs,” the former CS said.
He further noted that he knows there will be unease over the issue, but taxes have to be paid.
