A total of thirty six resident accountants have ended a four day training and are now ready for deployment countrywide to help businessmen with accountability and tax compliance.

Resident accountant is a program recently introduced by the Private Sector Federation (PSF) to intensify facilitation to private sector that is aimed at helping their businesses grow.

Emanuel Hategeka, CEO of PSF revealed that they had to partner with Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) to create the program because of the tax compliance component was more specific to the prevalence of poor business practices in the business community.

"There is copy and paste with little innovation. Sometimes they (businessmen) think they aren’t obligated to paying tax. We talked to RRA about the issues and on coming up with a solution,” he said.

This follows a recent deployment of 120 trained consultants within the Business Development Service Centers (BDS) countrywide to also facilitate the business sector with proper business practices.

Hategeka disclosed that during the four day training the accountants were trained on newly created software called G ledger and taxation laws.

"We asked RRA to help the businessmen raise capacity to pay tax well therefore they paid for the creation of the software and the trainings. Further modifications will be made increasing demands from the businessmen,” he said.

However, Celestin Bubakare, the commissioner for Domestic Taxes cautioned the resident accountants on being involved with the businessmen in unscrupulous behavior.

"Don’t connive with the taxpayers for under declaration. You will be met with challenges of forgery of documentation. We are trying to increase professionalism in taxation within the business sector,” he said.

Hategeka cautioned them on proper customer care practices and told them that their operations would be evaluated for effectiveness.

"We as you to have proper customer care and receive them well and listen. We shall also require a monthly report on your operations,” he said.

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