| Published Wed, February 14th 2018 at 00:00, Updated February 13th 2018 at 21:21 GMT +3A decision by the National Treasury to increase excise tax last year in a bid to increase revenue collection appears to have backfired. The action, which was also meant to ease the administration of excise taxation, may have had the exact opposite effect, substantially reducing the revenue collected over the first half of the current financial year. This means the taxman collected Sh74 billion during the first half of the 2017/18 financial year, compared to Sh81.6 billion over a similar half in 2016. KRA attributed the decline to a drop in collections from the alcohol and tobacco industries, which are among the main targets of excise tax, also referred to as sin tax. Nikhil Hira, tax partner at Deloitte East Africa, said the drop in excise tax revenues was due to the state of the economy last year, where people had to do with less luxury items as disposable income reduced.

Source: Standard Digital February 13, 2018 21:00 UTC