Crown Agents has a long and well established working relationship across the continent of Africa. In many instances we have been the contracted provider of technical assistance projects designed to consolidate the creation of Semi Autonomous Revenue Authorities (RAs). Arising out of our involvement in the Ghanaian VAT implementation of the late 1990s, a forum known as VAT Administrations in Africa (VADA) was set up. VADA is a growing organisation with (currently) 15 member nations, who meet annually to discuss and formulate common goals, policies and strategies and to discuss key revenue management problems and issues being encountered across the continent. The organisation has a rotating Presidency that is formally transferred each year at the Annual VADA Conference; the presidency is usually the Commissioner General or VAT Commissioner of the hosting member nation. Crown Agents is the only regular attendee that is not a Government Revenue Agency, and our unique position has been established through 12 years of close association and the development of a working relationship with the Secretariat and its members.
We are seen as a valuable resource by the VADA group, by being the only regular non-member invited to attend conferences, and also a regularly being used by the group to contribute technical expertise and key note speeches at Annual Conferences and any fringe events. VADA's remit touches on issues of tax policy as well as administration, the two being inherently interlinked.
At the 2008 Annual Conference in Lesotho, Crown Agents was specifically approached by the Secretariat to organise and manage a benchmarking event on Taxpayer Audit.
In the last week of September this VAT Audit Workshop was successfully run and facilitated by Crown Agents' team in Nairobi, Kenya. Attending member states all had the opportunity to contribute their own presentations on problems and issues currently being encountered. Key presentations by Crown Agents were delivered on benefits of Computer Audit Techniques and associated specialist IT software tools available to tax administrations. Delegates came up with a short list of key issues followed by potential solutions which could be utilised across the group. One particularly interesting outcome was the need for liaison in order to combat certain tax avoidance schemes that had been 'tried and tested' in Europe by larger multinational entities; whilst these may have been challenged through the courts in Europe and eventually 'closed off', it is possible that the schemes may be duplicated in any of the independent tax jurisdictions in Africa, each of which has its own separate underpinning legislation. All delegates agreed that these contrived avoidance schemes posed a very real threat to revenue enhancement priorities in all their respective jurisdictions. From this a draft best practice document was drawn up ready to be ratified at the next Annual Conference in Ghana in December 2009.
Feedback at the end of this successful event, showed that delegates had found it invaluable in recognising key issues across Africa and that the networking opportunity was a rare chance to learn from fellow tax administrators of the common problems being encountered and how they had dealt with these issues.
Crown Agents will continue to nurture our special relationship with the VADA Group and will present findings from this workshop at the December Conference. Our continued commitment to the VADA group, not only maintains an interactive face to face relationship with multiple tax administrations, but also ensures Crown Agents continues to be seen by many as the first point of contact when assistance and specialist technical advice is required.
Photo Captions (Photo one: Participants at the VADA VAT Audit Workshop. Photo two and three: Mrs Mary Mukarwego from Rwanda and Mr Ike M Okolo from Nigeria, receive certificates from Booker Odenyo, Country Director, Crown Agents Kenya).