URA to register shops eligible for EFRIS

By Gideon Peter Ssebulime

10^th June 2024

The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) has set to register all shops in the Kikuubo business center to identify those eligible to pay Value Added Tax (VAT). 

The move is aimed at addressing traders’ concerns that the Electronic Fiscal Receipting and Invoicing System (EFRIS) introduced by URA, targets all traders, yet many of them are below the threshold of 150m annually, that qualifies a business to the system.

According to URA Commissioner General John Musinguzi, the registration exercise will help determine which businesses are eligible to pay VAT.

Musinguzi also revealed that URA has been losing 4 trillion shillings annually due to lack of capacity in collecting taxes, which EFRIS aims to address.

Currently, there are 32,000 registered VAT payers, and URA plans to continue implementing EFRIS to widen the tax base.

The registration exercise is expected to help URA to accurately identify and collect taxes from eligible businesses, thereby reducing revenue loss and enhancing tax compliance.

The Electronic Fiscal Receipting and Invoicing Solution (EFRIS) is an initiative under the Government Domestic Revenue Mobilization Strategy that was designed to manage the issuance and centralized tracking of all e-receipts or e-invoices, enforce the usage by all taxpayers required to improve business efficiencies, reduce the cost of compliance through improved record keeping among taxpayers and mitigate tax administration shortfalls while promoting efficiency.