Court suspends digital revenue collections in Homa Bay
Homa Bay Governor Gladys Wanga addressing county staff in the past. The courts have temporarily stopped her program on digital revenue collection.
Homa Bay Governor Gladys Wanga has suffered a major blow in her push for reforms in revenue collection after the High Court temporarily suspended the push to go digital.
This is after a trader in Homa Bay town filed a petition challenging the new system of revenue collection.
When Ms Wanga took over power from her predecessor Cyprian Awiti, she discovered that the revenue collected could not sustain government operations.
Revenue officers would walk from one business to another asking for cash.
They would then issue a receipt to acknowledge that money had been paid.
But rogue officers pocketed a fraction of the collections.
In the last financial year, the county government collected Sh300 million, with experts saying it has the potential to rake in Sh1 billion.
To fight fraud and protect collections, one measure was to introduce a system where tax is paid via mobile phones.
New revenue streams
She also identified new revenue collection streams, such as taxing fishermen and boda boda riders, two groups that had not paid taxes since the inception of devolution.
Her ideas were slowly picking up, until Tuesday when the High Court in Homa Bay ordered the digital process stopped.
Mr Evans Oloo, the trader who sued the county in the case, argued that the online system of collecting taxes cannot be used by everyone.
He said using mobile phones to pay taxes is not convenient for those with mobile loans.
"Traders [with] mobile loans are not able to deposit any amount [that is] below the loans [owed] to pay tax to the county government of Homa Bay," the petition says.
High Court Judge Kiarie W. Kiarie ordered the county government (first respondent), county secretary (second respondent) and Safaricom (third respondent) to halt the use of M-Pesa paybill numbers to collect taxes until November 29, when an inter partes hearing will take place.
Mr Oloo filed the case with the help of lawyers on November 8.
He wants the court to restrain the county from using the digital system and order manual revenue collection, claiming the latter is more convenient to a majority of traders.
