The government has given all the digital betting and gambling companies up to the end of June to integrate their data with the Kenya Revenue Authority’s (KRA) real-time system or miss license renewal by the Betting Control and Licensing Board (BCLB).

The move follows a sluggish on-boarding of KRA’s real-time data transmission system, especially among small players in the lucrative betting sector, as the fight against tax cheats intensifies.

Those hooked into the system are required to remit excise and withholding tax (WHT) on a daily basis instead of monthly.

KRA yesterday hooked the third batch of 20 betting companies, bringing the total number of firms it currently has real-time access to 36, which represents about 26 per cent of the cumulative 137 sector players that the taxman estimates can be integrated.

Gaming operators

“It is government intention to have all gaming operators on boarded into the system. Any operator that will be unable to be on-boarded due to lack of capacity or unwilling to be on-boarded will not be allowed to operate in the country,” head of the public service Felix Koskei said yesterday during the launch of the integration of the third batch.

The last batch has until May 12 to have their integrated system go live and be accessible to KRA.
Koskei said the government will only work with the few operators willing to comply with the new rules. Operations of BCLB was transferred from the Ministry of Interior to the Executive Office of the President when the new regime took over.

According to the acting Commissioner General Rispah Simiyu, by April 16, KRA had collected Sh6.6 billion from the 16 major betting firms that were already hooked on its system since last November, representing about 29 per cent sector’s revenue growth compared to a similar period last fiscal year. The 16 firms contribute 80 per cent of the sector’s tax revenue.

The push to automate tax data transmission is among the latest technological moves by the authorities to increase compliance levels in the entire betting sector amid pressures to improve the country’s revenue collection.

KRA is currently pushing for full implementation of the automatic betting tax returns data transmission held by BCLB which is still conducted manually on a monthly basis, creating coordination hitches between the taxman and the sector regulator.