[kictanet] Australian Treasurer proposes 'Netflix Tax' for digital imports

Thu Feb 11 04:40:08 EAT 2016

Greetings Mike,
Thank you for your great brief!
I note that Maawy (Swahili Box) for whom this matter is a great thorn in the flesh is based/has activities in Mombasa as a hub. A region with vibrant economic activity whereby entrepreneurship (specifically formal entrepreneurship) by most of the public has not been the norm in the past, however we are seeing an awakening as in most parts of the country.
As a hub with entrepreneurs, possibly they would also be dealing with the complexities of the new wave as entrepreneurs come for assistance at the hub yet the public service environment is still not conducive for start-ups. With the new County structure  on top of the National Government, each County with its requirements, it is even more complicated.

Certainly, business incubation becomes much easier when there is a focus on incentives and streamlining of processes, some of which you have recommend.

Blessed day.
Regards/Wangari ---
Pray God Bless. 2013Wangari circa - "Being of the Light, We are Restored Through Faith in Mind, Body and Spirit; We Manifest The Kingdom of God on Earth".

    On Thursday, 11 February 2016, 0:06, Michael Pedersen via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

  Hi Everyone,

 Tax-holidays / rebates is in my mind the wrong way to encourage more/better startups.

   - A startup generally invests a lot into the company in the initial years, and only later once the company has grown does it start making a (proper) profit, and since tax's are calculated based on profit a initial tax-holiday has very little impact (unless you have a smash hit from day one - in which case it matters little anyway).   

   - International stakeholders (World-bank ?) strongly encourage fewer and fewer exceptions to tax-laws, so to ensure as wide a tax-base as possible, afaik this was one of the main motivations for the recent revision of the VAT act where most exemptions and zero-ratings was removed. So there is strong resistance to introducing new exemptions.   

   - Tax-holidays are politically hot-potatoes, every politician will argue that the special interest they are representing should have a tax-holiday, hence getting an agreement/majority vote to actually pass one for any area is highly unlikely.
   - Tax-holidays for new companies could potentially create major tax-loopholes, with certain crafty business people re-starting their business every x years.   

 Instead I think that we should look into other ways to incentivize startups

   - Lower the administrative overhead of being in the "formal" sector, this will benefit every company but startups/SME's in particular as the overhead is a larger burden for these. Also it will be beneficial for all companies going forward and not just a few for a limited time.

   - Combine payment collections, so that as a company you only have to perform ONE payment ONE place every month, then the various stakeholders could (easily) split the collected revenue in accordance with the supplied returns.
   - Review, simplify and unify the various returns required, When doing returns regarding employees some stakeholders ask for First, Middle, Last names, others for First and Other names etc. In short each individual stakeholder is asking for the "same" information but each in their own structure/format, this makes it difficult to "copy-paste" information from one return to the other and wastes time as you have to maintain the same information in multiple  formats.   

   - Look for ways to reduce the amount of required "registrations", why is it that when you hire your first employee you have to register with KRA that you have a PAYE obligation, you have to register with both NHIF, NSSF, and NITA as an employer, WHY can't you just register ONE PLACE saying "We are now employers".
   - Encourage/enable stakeholders to work better together, why is it required that you provide the same information over and over again to each stakeholder in triplet copies. Example: Allow banks to pull registration information from the company registry for KYC requirements so that one does not need to bring 100 copies of everything just to open a bank-account or similar.    

   - Lower the learning curve for newly started companies, as a startup you have more than enough to learn / deal with, make the compliance part as painless as possible.

   - Huduma centers are a great start as a single point of entry, but it would be even better to reduce the amount of compliance hoops needed to start with. Example my "startup" is in it's 5th year - every year without exception we have learned of a new stakeholder who we also are supposed to register with and report to, meaning that until we learned of it (often by accident) we were not compliant with that particular stakeholder. Why can't the individual  (governmental) stakeholders automatically be notified about newly registered companies and reach out ?
   - Ensure that EVERY government agency maintains and UPDATES a "are you a new company guide" on their website - which in detail explains how to be compliant with that particular agency, and most importantly exactly which documents are required for each process - did I mention: keep it UPDATED.   

   - Offer "startup packages" to newly started companies - offer e.g. 10hours of professional services from auditors / lawyers free or subsidized, this will make it much easier for a newly started company to get the advice needed to start in the right direction.
   - Figure out some sort of mentor structure where newly started companies are assigned some seasoned administrator to advice them on how to structure and deal with all the overhead.    

 ..
 Mike

 On 2/10/16 8:57 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet wrote:

 Ahmed, On a practical note, I would wish to see a list of the taxes that hinder the growth of startups. That way, we may point to policy makers the impediments the next Google or Whatsapp in Kenya will face On Feb 10, 2016 8:27 PM, "Ahmed Mohamed Maawy" <ultimateprogramer at gmail.com> wrote:

  I think we all understand how India is significantly ahead of us in matters technology. But still, read on: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/pm-modis-big-push-for-startups-3-yr-tax-holiday-rs-10-000-crore-fund/1/572377.html

  I wish we were in any way close to this Mwendwa.

 On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 8:04 PM, Mwendwa Kivuva <lordmwesh at gmail.com> wrote:

 Thanks Moses for this. Allow us to hijack the thread. Ahmed Maawy, what are these taxes you are talking about? Most governments have hundreds of taxes, considering even to bury someone attracts  levies. I've heard this line of reasoning for a while. Maybe we can try to debunk it. Regards  

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