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Kenya:Taxman has no right to access your mobile transactions
No one has the right to snoop into your mobile phone to access your cash transactions, just not yet. The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has said that unless the laws on confidentiality are changed, mobile money transactions remain a top secret between a subscriber and a telecoms operator.
Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) is reported to have asked Safaricom for the right to access individual and companies’ mobile money transactions in one of its fiercest onslaughts on tax cheats.
However, Safaricom, which controls the lion's share of the mobile money transactions, has vehemently opposed the move, saying that it is an affront on individuals' privacy.
Tuesday, the director general, Francis Wangusi, amplified Safaricom’s voice, noting that the communications regulator had signed an agreement with telecom operators not to disclose customer information.
“At the moment, information regarding consumers is confidential information. And the operators have signed an agreement with us that they cannot release the information unless, maybe through a court order,” said Wangusi, adding that even the regulator is limited on the kind of information they can ask the operators to give.
Besides, the Constitution of Kenya grants “every person... the right to privacy” including “the right not to have the privacy of their communications infringed upon.” “There is legislation in place that talks about data protection and data policy, which is really outside our scope as an ICT regulator,” he explained.
He said the data management policy is being handled at the legislative level. When it is complete it will be able to address these issues. The director general, who spoke when they launched the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology for regulatory purposes, said usage of ICT services is ideally taxed. “But whether the money itself that you are transferring to another person should be taxed or not, that is still quite debatable,” he said.
The uptake of mobile money services in the country has picked up, with subscribers transacting close to Sh840.3 billion in the first three months of the year. Of this, money transacted through Safaricom’s mobile transfer service, M-Pesa, was valued at Sh764.7 billion, or about 90 per cent of the total cash transacted.
KRA is of the opinion that some Kenyans have in some way used mobile money transfer services to avoid the taxman’s noose. The taxman has perennially failed to meet
Treasury’s revenue collection target and has lately been under pressure to impress. It plans to go after tax evaders as well as spread the tax net to include traders in the informal sector who have not been included in the tax-bracket.
For the financial year 2016-17, KRA was given a collection target of Sh1.37 billion, which remains a tall order for the tax collecting agent. However, mobile subscribers’ relief might be short-lived as there is legislation in the pipeline to cure this anomaly. He said that the taxation is on airtime. “By using that airtime to be able to deliver whatever you, whether it is your financial services or any other services including data services, you are paying tax to the Government,” he added.
SOURCE:STANDARD MEDIA
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