By. Our reporter
Tax advocate
under the tax justice alliance group Uganda are question why the Uganda government
continues to waive over UGX.500BN taxes from seven companies which have been in
operation for years and are calling on the auditor general to carry out special
financial audits on these companies.
Addressing a
joint press conference today in Kampala, the country director SEATINI Uganda,
Jane Naluga and the programmes officer Action Aid Uganda, Fredrick Kawoya say,
that some of the taxes which were waived include, UGX.20BN for steel and tube
industries Ltd, UGX.57BN for Cipla quality chemicals, UGX.3BN for Aya
investments and UGX.86.8BN for southern range nyanza ltd noting with concern on
whose behalf government is expected to pay taxes.
However, the
executive director, Anti corruption coalition Uganda, Cissy Kagaba goes ahead
to condemn legislators for exhibiting the highest level of greedy following the
passing of a proposal to be exempted from paying OTT for their Ipads.
Kagaba notes
that the same MPs passed the OTT act two years on grounds that even the lowest
income earning Ugandan would afford paying the UGX.200 per day. Kagaba now
questions the legislators to answer what happened after a few months for them
not to pay the tax.
With the
teachers currently on strike as the term commences, it is estimated that
UGX.500BN government plans to pay for the above companies can be used to pay
salaries of 69000 teacher or 67954 nurses for a full year.
The
advocates now demand that government sets up an independent salary review
commission to regulate payments and emoluments for all civil servants, parliament
stays the proposal to pay taxes on over the top services for MPs, the auditor
general carries out an independent financial audit into the above companies to ascertain
their business operations.
Parliament
is in the final stages of discussing the 2019/20 budget which is estimated at
about UGX.41TRN with a rise of UGX.7Trn from the initial UGX.34.2Trn budget as
per the national budget framework paper that was approved by parliament in February
2019.
END