Treasury may not table Finance Bill next year- CS Mbadi

Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi says the government is considering bypassing Finance Bill 2025/2026.

Mbadi who spoke during a Town Hall interview on Citizen TV’s JKLive Show on Wednesday revealed that his ministry was contemplating avoiding another Finance Bill before the implementation of the current one so that it does continue unburdening Kenyans.

According to the CS, the Treasury’s policy of upholding the principle of taxes as predictable and certain to taxpayers called for deliberation 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. 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.”

He said that the Ministry had laid proposals to ensure all citizens who currently are not included in the tax bracket are brought in and pay their taxes responsibly in order for 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.”