Raila terms proposed 3 percent housing tax unreasonable

By Peter Ochieng

Azimio La Umoja One Kenya leader, Raila Odinga has differed with President William Ruto's administration on a proposed new tax.

Ruto's regime has proposed a 3 percent housing tax through the 2023/2024 finance bill, in what the President says is a step towards ensuring that public servants own decent houses at affordable rates.

However, Odinga during a press conference on Monday said the new tax is unreasonable and completely out of order.

"Kenya Kwanza wants to deduct 3 percent of basic salaries to finance the affordable housing scheme. How the regime arrived on 3 percent and not 1 percent nobody knows," said the opposition leader.

"In an economy where employees are already faced with reduced income due to high cost of living, we find the proposal introducing the new tax irrational."

Odinga said owning a house is not a priority to all public servants.

"It is not clear why an employee who does not need a house would have his money tied up in a housing scheme when they could wish to spend it on farming or just feeding their family," said Odinga.

Additionally, the ODM party supremo said taxation proposed in the new bill will 'strangle Kenyans to death.'

"The tsunami of taxes in that bill will bury everyone, especially the jobless youth and the poor struggling down at the bottom. The Bill is a promissory note to strangle and suffocate the hustlers that Ruto promised to remove the rope from their necks."

He also threatened to take his troops back to the streets, if bipartisan talks do not start by Wednesday this week.