The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) has entered into an agreement with TATA Consultancy Services (TCS) for the latter to develop a 24-hour Integrated Tax Administration System that will enable Ugandans to pay their taxes online.
“With the strong domain expertise in executing tax administration systems for various tax authorities across the globe, TCS will assist URA in business process re-engineering, capacity building and change management to improvise and optimize the business process execution jointly with URA management,” said URA Commissioner General Allen Kagina.
The new system, which TCS will install at a cost of US$11.5 million, should aid the Uganda government’s effort of reducing dependence on development partner finance, as it will help manage all domestic taxes and duties, including income tax, value-added tax, withholding tax and other excise duties.
Implementation of the new system is expected to increase tax revenue, optimize use of resources (leading to reduced cost of tax administration) and make available critical data to support decision-making.
“The system will lead to improved quality of service delivery and reduced compliance costs to taxpayers,” Kagina said. “We will provide comprehensive data to the finance ministry for effective macroeconomic policy decisions.”
TCS Vice President Tanmoy Chakrabarty said work on the multiple electronic tax remittance system will start next month, and the system is expected to become operational in March 2009. The project will be implemented in phases at tax offices throughout Uganda.
Under the project, a suite of applications will be developed for effecting and monitoring key activities of tax administration, such as registration, returns, payments, assessment, taxpayer accounts, audit, compliance, objections, appeals and investigations. The system will also incorporate best international practices, security features on a highly secure platform accessible only to selected users.
The project encompasses what URA has called a citizen portal, which will be accessible 24 hours a day and will act as an interface between URA and taxpayers. According to Kagina, taxpayers will be able to submit applications online, track the application status and make electronic payments through the citizen portal.
“The citizen portal would bring the much-needed transparency in the tax administration by giving taxpayers online access to all the information pertaining to tax administration,” Kagina said.
Chakrabarty said TCS will also provide a human-resource system, document management system and case tracking system as part of the project scope.
TCS beat out six other firms on an October 2006 shortlist in a bid to work with URA.
