Counties tighten noose on rates defaulters in iTax deal

County governments are set to partner with the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) in the collection of property rates as they look to plug their revenue shortfalls.

The devolved units have struggled to enforce compliance in property rate collection, resulting in billions of shillings of unrealised revenue that forces many of them to rely on the national government for the bulk of their budgetary requirement.

The KRA said it had started integrating its i-Tax system with county revenue collection systems, which would make it easier for the devolved units to collect the rates without property owners having to visit county offices to make payments.

“Once fully implemented, other than boosting revenue collection for the counties, taxpayers will not be expected to visit county revenue offices for billing slips or to make payments for property rates.

“They will be able to carry out this task from their place of comfort using i-Tax system,” said KRA commissioner for domestic taxes Benson Korongo.

Counties have been forced to offer regular penalty amnesties to property rate defaulters in a bid to encourage them to pay up.

The process of attaching and auctioning the property of defaulters is expensive and time consuming for counties.

Some of the biggest rate defaulters are government departments including the more than Sh2 billion the county government of Nairobi has been claiming from state broadcaster KBC.

City Hall earlier this year said it is owed Sh110 billion in land rates, with government institutions accounting for about half of the amount.