The Global Tax Program supported a technical mission to the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) in Nairobi from March 6th to 10th, 2023 through the Piloting and Evaluating Enforcement, Facilitation and Trust (EFT) Based Strategies to Improve Tax Compliance project.
Collectively, meetings were conducted with almost 100 officials from the following divisions within the KRA: Strategy, Innovation and Risk Management, Domestic Tax Department, Intelligence and Strategic Operations Investigations and Enforcement Department and Marketing and Communication. This mission is part of an over 18-month collaboration between the KRA and the World Bank focusing on ways to address the challenge of low tax compliance among Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) in Kenya.
As part of this engagement, the World Bank team conducted a comprehensive study, including a technical assessment, political economy analysis and survey of over 1300 formal and informal MSMEs to produce a report titled ¡°Improving Tax Compliance in the MSMEs Sector: Assessing Enforcement, Facilitation and Trust.¡± Following the virtual delivery of the report in November 2022, the team has conducted six capacity-building workshops for over 130 KRA officials (58 of which were female) focusing on how impact evaluations can be used to pilot and trial the tax reforms that were identified in the report.
The recent mission facilitated further dissemination of this report and helped KRA officials co-design trials of the proposed tax reforms. These trials will be implemented by the KRA, with support from the World Bank team, over the coming months and the results will help to inform improvements in tax policy and administration that can be implemented next financial year.