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
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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@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
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