The Catering and Tourism Development Levy Trustees will adopt electronic money transfer systems to ease the remittance hitches faced by its customers.
Ms Flora Ngonze, the information technology manager said e-banking and mobile money transfers will be introduced to reduce the need for hotel and restaurant owners to make payments manually at its branches.
"We are investing in ICT in order to drive innovation and efficiency in levy payment so that we can streamline the trust's activities," Ms Ngonze said. The parastatal will also set up a website that helps interaction with customers.
The portal will include an online membership registration system, download centre, e-commerce and online payment options.
The trust will also use M-Pesa and Zap to collect the levy, which is assessed at two per cent of gross revenue derived from the sale of accommodation, food, drinks and all other services offered in scheduled establishments.
The parastatal receives payments through Kenya Commercial Bank and Co-operative Bank. The trust's mandate is to collect, control and administer the levy fund and pass on the payments to Kenya Tourist Board, which is used to promote Kenya as a tourist destination locally and internationally.
The proceeds are also used to fund training activities for tourism related personnel including at the Kenya Utalii College.
The Tourism Trust Fund plans to build two colleges -- one in Mombasa to be called Ronald Ngala College and the other in Kisumu -- to ease the pressure on Utalii College in Nairobi.
The Catering and Tourism Development Levy Trustees chief executive officer Allan Chenane said the United Arab Emirates had last year placed an order for graduate workers for its hospitality industry, but only managed to get 200. Utalii trains 500 students a year.
A survey conducted by Pubs Entertainment and Restaurants Association of Kenya indicated that the government was losing Sh236 million and Sh1.3 billion in uncollected catering levy and value added tax respectively. Restaurants or bars with more than Sh3 million annual turnovers are required to register and pay a further two per cent catering levy. However, the research said most companies are unregistered and hence do not pay both levies. The catering, training and tourism development levy is payable on or before the 10th of every month.
Restaurants and bar owners' failure to pay taxes becomes the latest headache for the Kenya Revenue Authority as it seeks to grow its revenue collections.
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