| YVONNE'S TAKE | PREACH WATER, TAX WINE

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-30

[00:00:07]Financial records should never be kept secret.

[00:00:11]If you allow people to keep their financial records, no one will pay taxes.

[00:00:16]Financial record There's nothing secret about financial record. We are not asking you about who is your boyfriend or your girlfriend. KRA will not come for that. Those are now private information.

[00:00:27]But financial data and statistics should be clear.

[00:00:33]That is why even companies today, if I ask you, for example, Equity, if Equity decides that they want to keep their financial data secret, that they don't want to declare how much have they have made in terms of interest on loans, who will pay tax in this country?

[00:00:51]>> Mhm.

[00:00:52]>> And yet, there are people who have been hiding behind data privacy not to declare other sources of income they have. You find people having billions of shillings, millions of shillings in their accounts, and they cannot They are filing nil return.

[00:01:09]They are filing nil return that the whole year they have made zero return.

[00:01:14]Nothing. They have not made any money.

[00:01:16]Yet, they have 50 million, they are going to buy an apartment.

[00:01:21]How unfair can that be?

[00:01:23]>> How unfair, indeed.

[00:01:26]Those were the words of Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Badi defending greater scrutiny over taxpayer information in an interview on TV47.

[00:01:38]And on principle, he is right.

[00:01:41]Modern states depend on transparency.

[00:01:44]Tax compliance depends on accountability.

[00:01:48]Governments everywhere are demanding greater visibility into income, transactions, ownership structures, and financial flows.

[00:01:57]Now, increasingly, the Kenyan state knows what you earn, what you spend, what you import, what you transfer, and sometimes even how you live.

[00:02:07]The argument is simple. If people hide financial records, then taxes become harder to collect.

[00:02:14]Fair enough.

[00:02:16]But perhaps taxpayers are equally entitled to ask, if citizens are expected to fully disclose to the state, why is the state still reluctant to fully disclose to citizens?

[00:02:29]Because some of the biggest financial obligations carried by Kenyan taxpayers remain partially hidden, heavily redacted, delayed, or tied up in court battles over disclosure.

[00:02:42]Take the standard gauge railway contracts, for example.

[00:02:46]For years, Kenyans have asked to see the agreements behind one of the most expensive infrastructure projects in the country's history.

[00:02:55]Agreements financed by public debt and ultimately repaid by you, the taxpayer.

[00:03:01]Yet citizens have had to go to court repeatedly simply to access documents signed in their own name.

[00:03:09]Even now, parts of that disclosure process continue to face resistance in court from the government itself.

[00:03:17]Then there are the independent power producer agreements.

[00:03:21]Every Kenyan feels the cost of electricity. Citizens know every charge on their power bill, but many still do not fully know the agreements behind those charges, capacity payments, take-or-pay clauses, ownership structures, and the long-term obligations that taxpayers may ultimately carry.

[00:03:40]Questions around those contracts have persisted for years because many of the details only emerge partially and often after public pressure.

[00:03:51]And then came the Adani deals, the proposed JKI concession agreement, the Ketraco transmission line agreement, multi-billion shilling arrangements negotiated largely away from public scrutiny only for citizens to learn more details through court challenges, media investigations, and eventually international controversy.

[00:04:14]Today, despite the airport deal having been terminated, Kenyans are still confronting questions around what exactly had already been committed, what liabilities may survive cancellation, and whether taxpayers could still shoulder financial consequences arising from termination clauses or compensation negotiations.

[00:04:35]And it is not the first time canceled government projects have still produced costly public obligations.

[00:04:41]This year, disclosures showed that taxpayers would pay more than 4 billion shillings following the cancellation of the Modogashe Habaswein Samatar Ramu Road Annuity Project, a project that never materialized, but still left behind termination costs.

[00:05:00]And while at it, can they make public the securitization deals?

[00:05:05]Where is the 7 million 7 shillings of the road maintenance levy fund going to?

[00:05:10]Oh, and how about the Rironi Mau Summit contract? And we now learn so late in the day that canceling the Kenya-France deal cost us 7 billion shillings.

[00:05:22]Still, no one from government has owned this cost.

[00:05:26]Not even Parliament has sought the contract or even the clause that burdens you, the taxpayer, to pay billions for what wasn't delivered.

[00:05:35]Or perhaps even the affordable housing contracts. Who are the contractors? Who is selling? Who are they selling to?

[00:05:42]All of these public-private partnerships, airport airport discussions, government to government infrastructure deals, natural resource agreements, health sector partnerships, sovereign guarantees, and confidential procurement arrangements whose full implications often only become visible years later, sometimes after litigation, controversy, or public outrage.

[00:06:09]You see, if ordinary citizens are expected to explain their finances down to the last transaction, then surely the state should be as forthcoming with the citizens about what exactly was signed, on what terms, at what cost, for whose benefit, and with what long-term consequences.

[00:06:30]Because, you see, transparency is not a one-way mirror, where citizens are seen clearly by government, while government remains obscured from the very people who fund it.

[00:06:43]The government is right to demand honesty from taxpayers, but taxpayers, too, have a right to honesty from their government.

[00:06:52]That's my take.