RRA’s initiative on tax step in the right direction

Editor,I would like to say that Ben Kagarama, the Commissioner General of Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) and his colleagues, are beginning to talk like economists. But the Private Sector Federation, Local Government, Rwanda Development Board, and the Ministry of Trade and Industry, please get together and comprehensively address the small businesses growth and expansion now that you realise they form 98 per cent registered businesses. Specifically come up with policies that enable small businesses to save, invest and expand. Engage and educate them what profit is and what disposable income is.Enable them to know when they are making or losing money and when they should make what decision. Many simply do their best but they could do better. Money is spent through fixed costs but also through many informal payments to local government, garbage collection and security all the way to wedding contributions every Saturday and the tithe every Sunday. For each small business that collapses and disappears, as an economy, we lose a purchaser of airtime, electricity, commercial loans, food, stationery, medicines, clothing, beer, water, transport, building materials, labour, etc. Scale these up and the economy contracts. Small businesses cannot be left to their devices and meet authority only when being charged for wrong doing. Without them, we won’t survive. The Revenue Protection Department has evolved of late, one imagines they just returned from Singapore. Sometime back, they presumed that every businessman/woman was a tax evader or smuggler of some sort. Today, it looks it’s the reverse, they respect people, no longer grab and imprison merchandise for days and are willing to engage and make their case rather than using raw power to clampdown. That is as it should be and it should be encouraged. It will pay more in the end. The RRA initiative is a step in the right direction but all the pieces need to be put together for the economy. Peter, Gatsata (Reaction to the story, ‘More tax cuts for small businesses’, The New Times, October 10)

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RRA’s initiative on tax step in the right direction