Kenya, Morocco tax information-sharing lauded

KRA Commissioner General James Githii Mburu. [Wilberforce Okwiri, Standard]

Kenya and Morocco’s commitment to start sharing tax information this year has been hailed in the fight against illicit financial flows. 

The collaboration between the two nations is one of the strides highlighted in the Tax Transparency in Africa 2022 Africa Initiative Progress Report which was unveiled on Tuesday.

This was during the 11th meeting of the Africa Initiative which is chaired by Kenya Revenue Authority Commissioner-General Mr Githii Mburu.

The report documents strides made by African countries to share financial information as a means to combat tax evasion and illicit financial flows. Ten African countries have committed to the automatic exchange of financial information by a specific date.

Kenya and Morocco are among these nations. Others are Uganda and Rwanda which committed to starting the automatic exchange of financial account information by 2023 and 2024 respectively.

The growing interest of African countries in this form of cooperation will be met by the support of the Global Forum Secretariat and its partners to help them along the implementation journey.

Other milestones include 22 African countries which are now parties to the multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters. The report describes this as the most comprehensive instrument for all forms of co-operation to tackle tax evasion.

The report has that some nine African countries reported collecting over Sh28.4 billion as a direct result of the exchange of information requests since 2014. This is through tax voluntary disclosure launched prior to the first automatic exchanges and offshore investigations.

“The report is testament to the valuable gains made in the fight against evasion and illicit financial flows through consistent utilisation of Exchange of Information (EOI) networks,” said Mr Mburu.