The date is 30th June, 2015 at around 5pm. Everyone in the office has been running up and down, trying to beat the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) deadline of filing tax returns.
“I have been trying since morning, but I keep on getting an error, KRA are not picking my calls to offer me help. It seems they are doing it deliberately so that they can penalize me,” says the stressed office secretary.
As she ponders the next move, the ICT officer at the office tells her to just fill the KRA form and return it to their offices.
“Just do it manually, you won’t be able to file the returns online because the KRA website is too congested by now. Don’t you know Kenyans rush to do things at the last minutes?” The ICT officer asks.
“But I think the deadline will be extended, since the system has been having problems for a while,” she says.
He quickly helps the secretary fill the form and asks her to take it back to KRA.
She finds a long queue at the form submission station, but she says she won’t leave until her mission is accomplished.
“The queue was long, but thank God it was moving fast. I managed to submit the form. Water can now reach in my stomach,” says the jubilant secretary on the morning of 1st July, 2015.
She logs into her Facebook account and sees an update posted by KRA at around 10pm.
“The deadline for filing tax returns has been extended to 3rd July, 2015. Kindly ensure that you have filed your returns to avoid being penalized,” the post read.
The secretary starts jumping up and down shouting the ICT officer’s name.
“I told you the deadline would be extended. For sure Kenyans like last minute rush. Something was telling me that I should not be shaken because this was going to happen,” she tells the ICT officer.
To support this, she takes the ICT officer down the memory lane.
“You see during President Moi’s regime, primary school opening date would be extended often, until it became a norm. Everyone’s ears were glued to the radio waiting for the usual announcement,” she said.
She went ahead to cite the extension of registration dates for candidates who want to sit for KCPE and KCSE exams and another reason as to why she thought the deadline would be extended.
“The Kenya National Examinations Council was forced to introduce late registration, to ensure that no candidate is locked out, the same also applies to the revision of courses when students join universities,” she said with confidence.
“We took too long to migrate to digital television because the deadline was being extended always. If and only if God would extend the day I will die,” the secretary joked.
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