Modernising Uganda’s Tax System

Using RippleNami technology, RippleNami® Uganda has partnered with the Government of Uganda to implement the world’s first-ever modern tax system that leverages blockchain technology, referred to as the Rental Tax Compliance System (rTCS™).

rTCS integrates various types of data from selected Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), matching properties in the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area to their beneficial individual or corporate owners within the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) tax register.

URA is the primary user of rTCS. Other participating MDAs include Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development (MLHUD); Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA); National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA); National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC); National Information Technology Authority (NITA-U), Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB) and the Ministry of Local Government and Local Councils.

Built on the latest cutting edge microservices architecture, rTCS is explicitly constructed for on-premise software environments. This architecture enables rapid development and deployment of advanced services such as multiple automated data source ingestion, mixed-mode databases, the analytic platform for performing machine learning and artificial intelligence, high-performance reporting and data visualisation platform, and blockchain.

RippleNami Uganda utilises existing data, and on-ground field teams to classify occupancy, i.e., whether a property is owner-occupied or rented and to determine the occupancy period and account for current and previous occupancy periods and estimate rental income assessable and rental tax to be paid before standard deductions.

Hyperledger® Fabric Blockchain keeps a transaction log of the records stored in rTCS. Transactions on the ledger are sequenced and cryptographically linked together. Once written, the blockchain data structure cannot be modified; it is immutable, thus guaranteeing incorruptibility of rTCS data.