Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei earlier this week wrote to the Clerk of the Senate proposing the deletion of Section 7 sub-section (3) of the Estate Duty Act.
The Act which was reviewed in 2012 exempted the families of late President Daniel Moi and that of former first family Jomo Kenyatta from paying taxes on property owned by the deceased or intended to be sold by the deceased.
As such, former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s family-linked bank now says it is ready to pay KSh 350 million tax waiver it benefited from during the NIC and CBA banks merger in 2019 which birthed NCBA bank.
During the previous regime, the national treasury exempted NCBA banks from paying taxes. The tax waiver since then has accrued to KSh 350 billion.
This saw Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah move to court saying that former Treasury CS Henry Rotich did not have the powers to arbitrarily grant NCBA bank tax waiver.
“The taxpayers will suffer great loss estimated at KSh 350 million in lost tax revenue that would have otherwise accrued to public coffers,” he said.
But on Thursday, February 2, NCBA Group Managing Director John Gachora defended the tax waiver saying it was above the board as the law allows for such.
He further assured Kenyans that the Uhuru-linked bank will obey the court ruling demanding it to pay all the accrued tax.
“What I assure Kenyans is that should the court find that NCBA was not entitled to the waiver… the day the court makes that determination, the following day we will send a cheque of KSh 350 million. That I can assure you,” Gachora said.
Cherargei in his letter had claimed that it was prescriptive for the Constitution to exempt the so-called ‘dynasties’ from paying taxes.
“The constitution under Article 210 on the imposition of taxation indicates that no person or entity shall be exempted from payment of tax. The constitution provides a prescriptive exemption of taxes not to include state officers as was purported in the Estate Duty Act section 7 (3) that exempted the estates of former presidents Kenyatta and Moi,” Cherargei said.
