New year’s wish for taxpayers: Fewer, efficient and better coordinated audits

By Waziri Jumanne

The year 2025 was, by all measures, a strong year for tax revenue collection. The Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) successfully met its monthly revenue collection targets throughout the year, culminating in an impressive Sh4 trillion collection in December 2025.

This performance reflects several positive developments, including continued investment in the digitisation of tax compliance systems, improved voluntary compliance by taxpayers, and more timely reviews of taxpayers’ compliance affairs.

These achievements are commendable, particularly given the domestic revenue mobilisation pressures facing various African economies.

That said, it is important to ensure that this success is sustainable.

Today’s collection must not be achieved at the expense of tomorrow’s taxpayers.

One of the major contributors to the strong revenue performance in 2025 was tax revenue arising from unpaid taxes established through audits.

Audits are typically conducted after taxpayers submit their self-assessment declarations and are intended to verify compliance with tax laws.

Tax audits take various forms, such as comprehensive tax audits, which involve an in-depth review of all taxes; tax examinations and desk audits, which are usually conducted on a spot basis and focus on submitted returns, late filings, or late payments; and issue-specific audits such as transfer pricing audits and post-clearance (customs) audits.

When I began my career as a tax consultant in 2015, and for several years thereafter, the TRA had a significant backlog of unaudited years for many taxpayers.

Audits were often conducted at two to four-year intervals.

 Such audits covered multiple years within the statute of limitation. This created considerable challenges, particularly around document retention within taxpayers’ finance teams.

 As a result, there were frequent calls for more timely audits to ensure that taxpayers could adequately respond to audit queries without loss of institutional knowledge.

Over time, and following substantial investment by the TRA, this situation has improved considerably. Today, especially within the Large Taxpayers and Medium Taxpayers Departments, audits are often initiated soon after the submission of the final income tax return for the year, which is a very positive development.

However, a new challenge has emerged; in addition to comprehensive tax audits, taxpayers are now increasingly subject to multiple parallel reviews during the same year.

These include tax examinations and other tax-specific reviews conducted independently by different units within the TRA.

In many cases, these reviews occur simultaneously or overlap with comprehensive audits, creating significant operational strain for taxpayers.

The challenge is compounded by the fact that these reviews are conducted by different TRA units, each raising its own issues, sometimes on the same tax matters, and even with divergent interpretations of tax laws.

This may create the impression that units operate with separate collection targets rather than as part of a coordinated institutional framework.

Taxpayers are often required to attend to multiple teams simultaneously, with limited flexibility from audit teams to adjust their schedules.

Even more concerning is the situation where the same potential tax adjustment is raised by more than one TRA unit; for example, both a comprehensive audit team and a tax examination team may raise one issue.

In principle, one team should easily take ownership, but in practice, this is often contested, with each unit wanting to assess the matter themselves.

This approach is unnecessarily disruptive to taxpayers.

As 2026 unfolds, taxpayers are calling for a more coordinated and synchronised audit and review framework.

Such an approach would allow taxpayers adequate time to engage with one TRA team at a time, rather than facing multiple, uncoordinated interventions.

A coordinated system that lets businesses focus on productivity and operations will ultimately support a more sustainable tax base.

Tax audits and reviews should be approached by the TRA, as one organisation with one shared objective, not as fragmented teams independently exerting pressure on taxpayers. 

Sustainable revenue collection depends not only on enforcement but also on fairness, coordination, and respect for taxpayers’ operational realities. May 2026 be the year taxpayers finally see meaningful relief from the growing number of uncoordinated tax audits and reviews.

Waziri Jumanne is a senior tax manager at Deloitte East Africa. The views presented are his own and not necessarily those of Deloitte. He can be reached at

[email protected].