Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi has stated that the government is considering bypassing the Finance Bill 2025/2026.
Mbadi revealed during a Citizen TV Town Hall interview on Wednesday that his ministry was considering avoiding another Finance Bill before implementing the current one in order to continue relieving Kenyans of their burdens.
According to the CS, the Treasury’s policy of keeping taxes predictable and certain for taxpayers necessitated careful consideration of how to strike a balance in ensuring revenue collection is fair to all Kenyans.
“A tax should be predictable and certain but you must also balance it off with other principles of taxation one of which is simplicity and the other is fairness,” said Mbadi.
“It is in our tax policy to make sure that tax is predictable and that is why we have said we will not be making many changes to our tax laws.The CS continued:
“As a matter of fact, we are even discussing at the treasury whether next year we should just avoid bringing anything called Finance Bill at all.”
Mbadi contends that the current Finance Act promotes an expanded tax base by ensuring that all Kenyans pay their tax obligations fairly.
He stated that the Ministry had put forward proposals to ensure that all citizens who are currently not in the tax bracket are brought in and pay their taxes responsibly.
This, he insists, will allow the government to reduce taxation without affecting revenue collection.
“There are certain unfair imbalances between taxes that we must correct where some people pay taxes and others don’t. I don’t think anyone would be happy if they pay taxes and others don’t,” he noted.
“The changes we are bringing are not to bring any tax yield, it is supposed to help Kenyans for example the proposal to offset the overpaid tax against taxpayers’ outstanding tax debts.”CS Mbadi added,
“We want every Kenyan to pay their fair share of taxes. We must be responsible so that we reduce taxation. “We want to reduce corporate tax to at least 25%, VAT to 14% and also PAYE but we can only do that if every Kenyan who is supposed to pay tax pays.”
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