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Written by Victor Mwangu
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Sunday, 30 November 2008 |
There has been a lot of talk about the need for Members of Parliament to “pay taxes like all of us”. Civil society leaders and members of the public have even issued countless ultimata on this issue.
It is perfectly within everybody’s right to voice their disapproval of the enormous “tax-free” emoluments that our Members of Parliament give themselves. It is actually a duty. But if the focus is truly earning the government some revenue which it can use to provide essential services to all of us, then we need to think outside the box. If the focus is a tax code that is fair and efficient, then let us direct our energies elsewhere.
First of all, MPs, like all of us, have a taxable income. At least that has been the case since the Majid Cockar Commission. They have a Kshs 200,000 income which is taxed at the same rate as all our incomes are. What this means is that the problem we face today is not tax evasion by MPs as such. It is a problem that has everything to do with the blank cheque we have given our Parliamentarians in deciding what allowances to grant themselves.
The Parliamentary Service Commission seemed like a brilliant idea. That was before we discovered that it was a Trojan horse for “legalizing” corruption at the highest level. New unreasonable allowances are born at the Parliamentary lobby over drinks (government subsidized drinks, by the way). Think about this, if you were given a free hand in deciding what allowances you should be paid, a fre hand in justifying these allowances, and if there was no cap on what you could pay yourself, then the sky would be for you as it is for our MPs the likely limit.
That is why as much as the calls for taxation of MPs’ allowances are justified and very well intended, this reform alone will not solve the problem. Our scheming MPs will authorize the taxation and then proceed to allocate themselves more allowances to take care of the deficit created by the tax. Let us seek to solve the larger problem. If street protests are the way to get them to listen and agree to play ball, let those street protests be about abolishing the Parliamentary Service Commission and reverting all matters of their pay to the Public Service Commission like all other public servants’. I do not think the Public Service Commission would, in whatever circumstances, have approved an entertainment allowance of Kshs 80,000.
Getting rid of the PSC and entrusting another body with the administration of both the salaries and the pension benefits of our Parliamentarians makes much more economic sense (both in terms of saving the Kenyan people money and saving our precious protesting passions and time) than merely demanding the taxation of their exorbitant allowances.
If it proves impossible (and I don’t see why) to scrap the PSC, then we should demand that any allowances that Members of Parliament vote for come to play in the next Parliament. The re-election rate of MPs has, over the last several elections, been about 30%. There is absolutely no incentive for MPs to vote for allowances they will not be enjoying.
If our obsession continues to be about the narrow issue of taxes and taxes alone, if we continue to believe paying taxes on “illegal” monies is enough, then we can rest assured that it will get darker in Kenya, even spectacularly so.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 30 November 2008 )
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