Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) has come under fire, as stakeholders in the furniture industry accused its custom officials of charging what they called “unfair” tax assessment on imported furniture.
Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) Commissioner General Harry Kitilya
In separate interviews, furniture importers pointed accusing fingers at TRA’s tax customs officers for engineering wrong import tax assessments, thus subjecting furniture importers to untold suffering.
“At the moment, we are witnessing a rapid growth of furniture subsector in our country, but I am afraid that such growth trend may be spoiled by high taxes on imported furniture,” said Hemed Suleman, a local trader who used to import furniture from Malaysia.
According to independent surveys, competition is stiff in the furniture industry, as the market is flooded with both imported and locally-produced furniture. Competitive furniture market has since broadened preferences for the would-be customers to select products of their choice.
However, stakeholders are worried that the healthy competition spirit and growth signals in the sub-sector are likely to be stagnated by wrong tax assessments by customs officers on imported furniture.
Andrew Herman, one of the furniture importers and distributors, said “as businesspeople, we understand our obligation to contribute to the national development by paying import taxes, but custom officials are not fair to us…their tax estimates are higher compared to the values of the imported furniture.”
He said that furniture importers have repeatedly raised the taxassessment issues with top TRA officials but nothing has been done to correct the anomaly.
A top official of one of the furniture dealers based in Mwanza, said “we face harassments at the customs offices in the course of clearing our consignments. And the situation will get worse if relevant government organs, particularly TRA will not take serious steps to solve these problems.”
The dealer, who declined to be named, decried unnecessary delays at the Dar es Salaam port, which he claimed were “deliberately” caused by wrong assessments and overestimates of value.
“At one time we forwarded our written concerns to the TRA chief, asking him to intervene and help furniture importers out of the ‘import tax burden’ which stemmed from wrong assessments being done by custom officials, but our complaints fell on deaf ears, as nothing has been done so far,” said a seasoned furniture importer.
He suggested that the government should sponsor a study-trip for TRA’s few custom officials to countries such as China, Malaysia, India etc, the sources of most furniture coming to Tanzania, so that they get exposed to foreign markets, specifically prices of furniture in these countries.
“I believe that after knowing the prices of these goods in China, custom officials will be in a better position to make the correct assessment of import taxes on furniture…in other words this will serve as a basis in the course of calculating import taxes and hence get rid of wrong assessments and price estimates,” observed the furniture trader.
Furniture importers calls for extensive review of import tax assessment system and replace it with “a fair and just system” that would encourage businesspeople to pay taxes and accelerate growth of the furniture sub-sector.
TRA Commissioner General Harry Kitilya said: “There are procedures for importers and businesspeople generally, to lodge their complaints regarding taxes. “They can either directly forward their complaints to TRA’s units responsible for such issues, and if they are not satisfied, they may present their cases to the national tax appeal bodies. All these avenues are open for them.”
Source Tanzania Daily News
