Central Equatoria state to harmonize taxes to eliminate cases of multiple taxation

JUBA – The minister of finance, planning and investment of Central Equatoria state, Wani Tom Sebit, said Wednesday that his government plans to harmonize taxes in a bid to reduce cases of multiple taxations in the state.

This came following outcry from traders over multiple, and usually, illegal taxations and arbitrary levies imposed on their business by government agencies.

“We are going to establish the mechanism of harmonizing taxes and there is already a consultant to analyst the taxes of the city council and local government,” Sebit told reporters on Wednesday during a press conference at the ministry’s headquarters in Juba.

Sebit said both state and local would have to agree on which body should collect taxes.

“We will have to agree which entity has to collect taxes to avoid this duplication where so many repeated people are seen in the market collecting a single tax which can easily be collected by one institution and develop a method where it can be shared,” Sebit said.

“I felt like there are overlapping powers between the state and the local government and I think in my daily consultations with the mayor of Juba City Council and with counties, particularly the local government,” he added.

He said the Ministry of Finance would soon sort out all problems of multiple taxations in a bid to give citizens clear direction on what tax to pay to which body.

“The state wills also analysed its revenues and then we shall have a conference to be headed by consultants to look at harmonization of taxes and we will see if there are concurrent taxes within the local government and the state,” he said.