Kuku Foods Uganda Limited, the company behind KFC restaurants in Uganda, has accused the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) of carrying out an overly aggressive tax operation at its Kololo offices, describing the incident as a security-style raid rather than an administrative inquiry.
The company’s concerns are detailed in a strongly worded protest letter addressed to URA Commissioner General John Musinguzi and copied to President Yoweri Museveni and Finance Minister Matia Kasaija.
According to Kuku Foods, the events of 19 November 2025 unfolded more like a crackdown than a regular tax check. URA investigation officers reportedly arrived armed, entered the premises during working hours and moved through the offices in a manner the company says caused panic among employees.
Staff remained unsettled as officers searched desks, accessed work areas and stayed on-site until around 11 p.m. “The way the officers moved through the office… did not look like a normal tax inquiry,” the company noted in the letter.
Kuku Foods insists that URA could have accessed all the information it needed simply by making a lawful request, without resorting to such force.
Beyond the armed presence, the company also faults URA for collecting data from its systems without demonstrating compliance with the Data Protection and Privacy Act. Kuku Foods argues that in doing so, the officers may have exposed sensitive customer and employee information.
At the heart of the complaint is URA’s decision to re-examine the period stretching from July 2019 to December 2023.
Kuku Foods says most of that timeframe—July 2019 to February 2022—was already thoroughly audited, with URA issuing final results in March 2023. They emphasise that they accepted the assessment and paid the taxes owed, closing the matter legally and administratively.
Reopening an audit, the company says, is only lawful when URA has credible evidence of fraud or wilful neglect—claims the authority has not made.
They argue that a concluded audit provides certainty to both the taxpayer and the tax body, and revisiting it without cause erodes confidence in URA’s decision-making.
The company links the raid to what it calls a broader trend of “adversarial conduct” over the last three years. This, they say, includes repeated audits covering the same issues and the unexplained removal of Kuku Foods from the list of withholding tax–exempt taxpayers, despite eligibility.
In the letter, Kuku Foods outlines its economic contribution as evidence of its compliance and commitment to Uganda. Approximately 600 Ugandans are employed by the company. It has paid over Shs 24.7 billion in taxes in just ten months. It has spent more than Shs 43 billion on goods and services from local suppliers.
Despite this, the company says it has “seen a growing pattern of hostile behaviour.”
The company has given the tax body five days to clarify two things: that the ongoing investigation will only cover March 2022 to December 2023, the portion that has not yet been audited; and that future engagements will follow established legal procedures.
If URA does not provide this assurance, Kuku Foods says it will “seek the protection of the law.”
The company concludes its protest by cautioning that such operations do not inspire investor confidence. It says that when major taxpayers who create jobs and buy locally are met with “enforcement-style operations instead of structured dialogue,” the message sent to investors is deeply worrying.
According to the letter, such conduct contradicts Uganda’s stated objective of attracting and retaining long-term investment.
