KRA will be monitoring rich Kenyans who display lavish lifestyles on social media.
Imagine posting a fake life on social media that makes you seem rich just for KRA to come and claim that you’re actually rich and then they claim that you pay no taxes? Social media has helped a lot of government institutions such as DCI and now the Kenya Revenue Authority Commissioner-General Githii Mburu has confirmed that his officers will now be keeping an eye on social media users who are posting images that don’t reflect their tax brackets.
While this new attempt may help KRA target a community of Kenyans who love living lavishly on social media with unexplained wealth, it might be a bit of a useless attempt. A lot of Kenyans currently live for the gram, which means that many people are able to show off materialistic possessions that they probably don’t even own. The people who will be widely affected will be social media influencers who post a variety of content that are paid partnerships which means they made money but do they pay taxes?
What happens if you don’t pay taxes?
Those found guilty of not paying taxes risk travel bans, collection of duty from their suppliers and bankers and prosecution. It’s no secret that more people are managing to evade taxes which has led to KRA not meeting its targets. The immense pressure on the company has led to them looking for taxes in every corner of the business industry in Kenya.
“In social media, we have some people posting some nice things. You would see some posting nice houses, cars, taking their families to nice places and so on. Here, we are not sleeping, when we see those, we see taxes,” Mr Mburu said in an interview with the Business Daily.
“We have our officers looking, they have gadgets. The key is in very quickly (the number plate) to check. We are working exceptionally hard,” he said.
Now that the secret is out we wonder if the “wash wash” community and the very flamboyant members of Instagram will start posting on Telegram or simply stop posting altogether.
