Robert Lumanyika Wamala, the Supervisor Tax Education at URA
Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) Friday met with leaders Tax Societies from 19 Universities in Uganda to further strengthen the spirit of nurturing a tax alert generation.
Speaking at the webinar, Robert Lumanyika Wamala, the Supervisor Tax Education at URA , said that since inception of tax societies in 2017, the URA team has overseen the creation of 19 tax societies in 19 university campuses across all regions in the country.
“We have also carried out community outreach activities that saw Tax Society students reach out to communities around their Universities such as the Nkozi community, Mengo community, Mbale community,” Lumanyika said about the achievements of the initiative.
He noted that other tax society achievements since 2017 include Tax Clinics, Seminars and Workshop, University Bazaars, Tree Planting, Tax Debates, Dialogues, Inter-faculty Competitions, Guest Lectures, Radio Talk-show and Community Debates among others.
“We have held ten VITA (Voluntary Income Tax Assistants) engagements where we have trained and equipped more than 1,600 students with skills to support their communities in URA processes such as return filling, TIN registration and EFRIS to roll out in the 4th Quarter,” Lumanyika said.
The first tax society was formed at Uganda Christian University (UCU), Mukono.
Anne Malongo, the President UCU Tax Society, who spoke on behalf of tax society leaders, thanked URA for creating tax societies to build the tax alert generation.
She noted that working with URA, more tax societies have been formed with the latest being MUBS Mbarara, Mbarara University of Science and Technology and Busitema University.
“Through University administrations, 10 Tax Societies, in partnership with URA, organized Voluntary Income Tax Assistants (VITA) programs where over 1,600 students were equipped with skills in TIN registration and returns filing,” Malongo said.
URA also has a program where it reaches out to secondary schools with the aim of instilling in students values related to voluntary tax compliance and their social responsibility to pay tax as citizens.
This initiative has seen the tax body establish a number of tax clubs country wide.
