THERE are divergent ideas in relation to the sort of tax reforms needed in our country to make the environment all the more welcoming for business generally and foreign investments in particular.

The other aspect is to make sure that the government is not hamstrung in its pursuit of revenues needed for executing current development plans and running the completed ones.

There is no denying that all successful development projects become additional recurrent expenditure when fully in the hands of local governments.

Quite a few development experts will have been surprised at a revelation that the technical working group of the Tanzania National Business Council (TNBC) is not just proposing the use of technology in informal sector tracking based on national identification, ostensibly to widen the tax base, but the hurry with which they went public on the issue.

The council’s latest meeting was held recently, in which case this idea has garnered consensus on the ranks of the panel, rather than passing the test of seeking out other stakeholders. That doesn’t have to include small traders as such.
 This suggestion was sort of echoed other debates or lines of concern, including when President Samia Suluhu Hassan addressed participants of the just-ended annual agro-sector national exhibition.

There were salient remarks directed at the way the government pampers its senior officials, all issued with standard four-wheel drive vehicle models.

Meanwhile, it has never been admitted that this is essential for their sense not really of status but of something deeper.

Critics of reliance on four-wheel drives in our country came fairly late for those who have been watching the civic and political scenario since the consolidation of reforms in the 1990s.

At that time, some isolated critics could be heard complaining about the four-wheel drives policy to the extent of one daily newspaper once running a gleeful news story headline going thus: “504 not a luxury car, Tanzania’s parliament told”. To this day, we hear that we need big vehicles to inspect projects.

This is an illustration of what brings fiscal policy decision-making to breaking point and the fact that one doesn’t see Europeans on a routine basis taking buses or trains or being with children in school makes the vehicles become a sort of identity.

Those in the government or public corporations can’t let go of those prerogatives as to the makes of the vehicles they use.

Now, a working group from among themselves suggests that everyone be tracked on his or her identification number so as to also pay taxes.

The panel had no idea that offloading 350 public firms on the stock exchange with strategic shareholders already in place, liquidating most of the foreign debt, would drastically cut revenue needs. It would go a long way to alleviating the concerns of the business community.

So far, it is not clear what proposals the government has on its sleeves towards lessening the cost effects of intermittent wrangles with the business community.

Much applies as to the answers being awaited from a panel of top-level experts, the idea that thinking the solution is tagging everyone to the tax computer base is somewhat unfortunate.

Carried to its hilt, this leads to much the same scenario seen elsewhere, that is, that of moving from low-level wholesale shop stoppages to radical demands by the unemployed, educated and less educated alike.

Just like we have tax holiday arrangements for investors to set foot in our country and create jobs, experts ought to desist from imagining that it is too much for those without registered frames to trade unnoticed.