The municipal council of Budaka has vowed to take tax evaders to court.
The town clerk, Grace Mudenya, stated that despite multiple reminders, defaulters had resorted to hide-and-seek games to avoid low-enforcement teams.
Budaka town council officials have pledged to take tax evaders to court if they do not pay their taxes.
Low revenue collection, according to the leaders, has hampered service delivery in the town council, which relies heavily on revenue from markets, parks, and property taxes, among other sources.
The town clerk, Grace Mudenya, stated that despite multiple reminders, defaulters had resorted to hide-and-seek games to avoid low-enforcement teams.
According to Mudenya, this has impacted the delivery of services such as employee emoluments, cabbage collection, street lighting, councilor allowances, and the opening of access roads, among other things.
“We will have no choice but to take serial defaulters to court since it is within our mandate.” We have a number of pending operations to implement using local revenue, and we can’t divert the government’s conditional grants,” she explained.
People are escaping paying taxes, according to a vendor who wanted anonymity, because of administrative inefficiencies, political meddling, a lack of sensitization, and corruption among the leaders.
According to the source, the town’s so-called “big fish” have been evading taxes for years, with some stretching back over ten years, but the authorities have remained silent, only rushing to harass the poor merchants.
The town council authorities have been scouring the streets and corridors for stubborn merchants and those who have erected unlawful structures for the past month.
The authorities have prematurely shifted the market that had been in the town center to a new location near the jails in order to resurrect its activities that had been grinding to a standstill.
Mr. Rogers Mukose, the town mayor, defended the decision, claiming that it is aimed at decongesting the packed streets and realigning the park stalls, which will help to prevent the spread of covid 19. He encouraged the local revenue task force to avoid being overbearing and extorting money from vendors.
