Uganda to introduce taxation education at its universities

Uganda:

URA Courts Varsities On Teaching Taxation

East African Business Week (Kampala)
March 5, 2007
Posted to the web March 14, 2007
Phillip Nabyama
Kampala
The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) is racing to create a knowledgeable youth tax base through lobbying universities to embrace tax education. Universities, a top management source at URA told Business Week, were best placed to pass on information and knowledge in a non threatening environment to the future taxpayers. The URA, under pressure from government to collect more revenue as it moves away from donor dependency is keen on incorporating tax education at the beginning of the 2007/08 university academic year. World over, the new modern approach to tax administration is through promotion of dialogue and voluntary compliance. Not to be left out, the URA under went comprehensive changes from November 2004 through to early February 2005 aimed at total transformation of the organisation in order
to substantially improve performance and cope with the dynamic nature of the business environment. Since then, it has on most occasions surpassed tax revenue collection targets. Voluntary compliance through tax education is anticipated by URA's commissioner general, Ms. Allen Kagina to dawn on the primitive era of tax road blocks, chasing and shooting at smugglers and locking up of businesses for non compliance. URA has already drafted a proposed taxation course syllabus whose ultimate objective
will be to instil the value of tax compliance in the citizenry. If and when the teaching is embraced either at programme or section level, the initiative will be the first of its kind on the continent. While Makerere University Business School in Kampala has been tipped to introduce the element of taxation through out all its programmes in the 2007/08 academic year, Nkumba University about 25 kilometres on the Kampala- Entebbe highway is in high gear to start the taxation programme at both under and post graduate levels. Australia and Canada are among the few countries in the world that teach taxation as a programme at select institutions of higher learning. Late last month, URA organised a well attended workshop for top university managers at Kampala's Hotel Africana on the development of a taxation curriculum. "Today we are participating in a workshop that will guarantee better quipped graduates from our universities and in the long run better informed and more tax complaint taxpayers," Kagina told workshop participants. How ever, some managers from the private universities were sceptical about the success of the initiative developed in 2005 because as private entities, they are more enchanted by courses that pulled in students by the droves. Saying that many of the universities were already loaded with various programmes with some containing elements of taxation, these managers also queried what criteria would be used to for example introduce taxation to students studying medicine and other core science courses at the university. "This project should be brought back to the table after five years because it is not practical. Who will pay the lecturers and provide the text books?" a senior manager at one of the leading universities told this reporter on condition of anonymity. Reacting to an inquiry from Business Week on the issue of resource material and persons for the project, URA's assistant commissioner for public and corporate affairs, Mr. Patrick Mukiibi said, "We have a resource data bank and where we are called upon, we shall come in." URA is also in talks with the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) which is finalising on a new curriculum for secondary schools to introduce taxation for the O' and A' levels through commerce and general paper subjects respectively.