Auditor General Edward Akol was shocked to discover that the motor vehicles which are being used at the Tax Appeals Tribunal have reached their expiring date and have become dangerous to individuals using them.
In his 2024-25 report which has already been handed over to the Speaker of parliament Annet Anita Among, Akol based on the Board of Survey reports and assets register which indicated that three vehicles which are still in use had exceeded their recommended useful life.
He noted that in his investigations, he established that the said vehicles had exceeded the recommended mileage of 250,000KM. He wondered why they are still in use.
Akol further discovered that the Tax Appeals Tribunal which is chaired by Crystal Kabajwara has been conducting hybrid hearings using digital platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams yet there are no formal guidelines or an internal policy regulating the mode of notification and access to these hybrid hearings.
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He added that his investigations also established that there is no tribunal charter to guide the day-to-day administration and accountability of the Tribunal.
“I noted a lack of clarity regarding the term limit for tribunal members in the Tax Appeals Tribunal Act. The Act and appointment letters of the Tribunal Members only specify the initial appointment terms as three years, but does not specify the number of terms a member can serve,” Akol stated in his report.
He discovered that there is also no corresponding control, policy or guideline from the appointing authority (Minister of Finance) pronouncing the number of terms a tribunal member may serve.
He noted that the absence of an appraisal mechanism, framework, or tool to measure the performance of Tribunal members, evidence of targets or benchmarks used to evaluate their contributions.
“This issue has persisted for several years, with no corrective action taken. I reviewed the approved NTR estimates for the FY 2024/2025 and noted that although the entity did not budget to collect NTR during the year, Shs9.33m was collected during the year,” he stated.
His review of the trend of cases for financial year 2022/23–2024/25 revealed a significant increase in pending cases noting that in financial year 2022–2023, case closures (227) nearly matched new filings (222), maintaining a manageable pending case count of 169 cases.
However, in the financial year 2023–2024, only 109 cases were closed against 272 filed, causing the pending cases to nearly double to 332 cases.
By the financial year 2024–2025, despite some improvement in closures (266), the pending cases further rose to 476 cases due to an increase in the filed cases.
“I noted that 6 procurement requirements worth Shs70m for supplies were split, yet they could have been combined and procured under a single contract. I reviewed the tax disputes received and managed by the Tribunal in the financial year 2024-2025 and noted that out of 410 cases, with a total amount of Shs656m only 72 cases were ruled, 105 cases were consented to, 27 cases were remitted back to Uganda Revenue Authority, 62 cases were withdrawn, and 144 (35.1%) cases remained outstanding,” he stated in his report.
He reviewed a sample of ongoing appeal cases from the date of filing to the date of the audit and noted that some cases took as long as sixty months to be resolved by the Tribunal adding that the average resolution time was 10 months.
