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City Lawyer Donald Kipkorir has claimed there is no country on earth whose economic growth can be attributed to tax collection.

Kipkorir’s sentiment on Friday, June 14, 2024, comes as Kenyans are engaged in a heated debate around the 2024 Finance Bill. The bill, a separate law outlining revenue-raising proposals, will accompany the 2024/25 budget. 

The proposals in the bill have proven very controversial, with Kenyans calling on their respective Members of Parliament to reject them when they are tabled on the floor of the National Assembly.

“No country has developed through taxation. Countries have developed through policies that spur industrialization, employment, FDI (foreign direct investment), and exports,” Kipkorir said in a statement on X.

The lawyer said Kenya Kwanza’s taxation regime is extremely squeezing taxes from an already overtaxed base. Kipkorir argued that Kenya was left behind, economically, by the East Asian tigers because the country did not follow the right path in economic growth.

“Taxation upon taxation in Kenya is squeezing the same less than three million taxpayers in a country of 60 million. Kenyan economic policy through taxation is like a drunkard who keeps going to the river to fetch water in a leaking bucket!

“We have to have a paradigm shift in our economic thinking. We can’t do the same thing since 1963 and expect Kenya. Singapore, Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia, and even Ethiopia thought differently and left us behind,” Kipkorir added.

Junet’s assurance

Meanwhile, Suna East Member of Parliament and the Minority Whip, Junet Mohammed, warned the opposition MPs from walking out during the debate on the Finance Bil.

“There will be no walkout during the Finance Bill 2024 on Tuesday, and if anybody absents themselves, there will be dire consequences. The budget that they will table is just a dream of how they will spend the money; the rubber will meet the road when they bring the Finance Bill.

“This is a budget for the executive; what they want to do is up to them; where they want to spend is their problem because that is their manifesto; where we come in is when they want to get that money, when they want to overtax Kenyans,” Mohammed told the press on June 13, when Treasury Cabinet Secretary was reading the budget statement.

Opposition MPs, led by Mohammed himself, walked out of parliament in February this year during a debate on the contentious Affordable Housing Bill debate.

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