Tanzanian lawmakers are urging government to speed up the electronic collection of revenues to prevent the loss of millions of taxpayer dollars each year to corruption and outright theft.
Dubbed ‘Power of the Purse’, the new electronic system is planned to help officials track down revenues which never reach the treasury due to widespread corruption, including the doctoring of paper receipts, lawmakers said. Officials also want to improve electronic tracking of government spending.
Tanzania loses about Tsh.700 billion ($4.37 million) a year to a porous system which allows tax evasion and mismanagement of public finances, spurring foreign donors to slash budget support aid three years ago. The move to electronic tax collection and budgeting is part of a broader push internationally to use technology to improve government accountability.
“We have instructed the government to immediately start collecting revenue from central and local government sources using electronic fiscal devices,” Zitto Kabwe, chairman of a parliamentary oversight committee on public accounts and deputy leader of the opposition in the parliament, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) projects it will collect Tsh. 9.5 trillion ($5.8 billion) in the 2013/14 fiscal year (July-June), a 19.9% rise from 2012/13 when tax collection rose by 16%.
The Electronic Fiscal Device is a programme that allows businesses to manage and analyse their sales and stock control electronically. The secure device, designed by the TRA, then calculates total turnover and government taxes due under each revenue category.
The TRA has also launched an electronic system for filing tax returns, and is working with the mobile networks to enable customers to pay their income taxes by phone.
Tanzanians can already use their mobile phones to pay certain fees such as those for motor vehicle licences. The TRA also plans to roll out applications for citizens to monitor how government revenues are collected and spent.
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