Few things remind me of mind numbing redundancy than the requirement of the Kenya Revenue Authority that all tax payers submit their written returns. Countless man hours are wasted by taxpayers, accountants all around Kenya and KRA employees to collect data that they already bloody have. Mind numbing repetitive manual work at unnecessary cost to the taxpayer.
As I vented my spleen on this matter the other day on my fourth attempt at filling my returns, friends and relatives backed away to a safe distance and I let slip the dogs of war.
What is my problem with the process?
- COMPLETELY redundant. You need a P9 form to fill in your returns. You then copy values from the P9 form onto your return. You then attach the same P9 form to your returns. Just think about that for a minute. What’s the damn point? I might as well just hand in my P9 again!
- COMPLETELY Greek. Not a soul I know could fill in those forms unassisted. Many accountants (including ours) flounder with the Greek like forms asking you to subtract this from that and put it there. (49A + 12B + 5C). What. The. Fuzz?
- COMPLETELY unacknowledged. If some KRA officials get marooned on an island and decide to set your returns on fire for warmth and cooking, you are buggered and have no recourse because you cannot prove you handed in the returns. You don’t get any receipts. In that same vain the KRA can’t prove that you didn’t either.
- COMPLETELY brain dead. If my only income is from my job, and the money is deducted even before I see it, why bother me with amorphous forms asking me questions I neither know, care about or understand? My company accountant is paid to do this, and he does in 12 months a year. Why bother me?
- COMPLETELY GRATUITIOUS use of my time. It is not, repeat NOT my work to track down landlords.
Instead of lowering taxes on cameras to promote the local porn movie industry
- Let tax returns only be for those with other income to declare. I don’t have flats or any other business so leave me alone and stop wasting my time!
- If we still have this foolishness, can’t the P9 be redesigned to BE the return for salaried employees?
- If we still have this foolishness, at least let it be online
- Stop asking me stupid questions. Especially if the answers are already in the P9
- Redesign the bloody thing to make it easier to fill. Why should I give my name, ID number, etc and I already filled in my PIN? It takes special talent to come up with the concept of Personal Identification Number and then ask me to identify myself some more. Nonsense.
- While at it, redesign the P9 too and label the figures with the corresponding slots in the returns forms. As it is both forms seem to have been designed by dyslexic, epileptic monkeys on crack and safari cane highs writing in a moving vehicle driving over corrugated potholes.
I assure whichever finance minister that scraps this stupidity, or at least reforms it, he will be thought of at least as a higher level mammal with binocular vision rather than the river trolls most people are sure their politicians are!
AOBYes, I am very much alive and have not been captured by martians. My blogging mojo is much sapped by twitter ( [twitter.com] ). However I shall make it a point to blog more. I have a lot to say
© M for tHiNkEr'S rOoM, 2009. |
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