County begins to tax bodaboda today in bid to raise Sh250 million

Bodaboda riders wait for passengers at Ang'awa junction stage in Kisumu on July 31,2018. [Photo: Denish Ochieng/ Standard])

Boda boda operators will from today start paying tax as the county government eyes to raise Sh250 million from the sector.

Finance Executive Nerry Achar yesterday announced the new measures, after previous attempts failed due to non-commitment from the operators.

But Mr Achar expressed optimism that the operators would start paying the taxes just like other business people in the town.

He said at least 35,000 operators were registered through Savings and Cooperative Societies (Saccos), and groups within the county, and each operator would be required to remit Sh20 to the revenue stream each day.

“This is just a tentative figure, which we have from the leaders of the operators, but we know there are many more operators who are not registered, and this revenue estimate may go higher,” said Achar.

Some of the operators have, however, said not all stakeholders participated in coming up with the measure