The Government will continue pushing for parliamentary approval to access individual bank accounts as part of efforts to enforce tax compliance, State Minister for Finance, Planning and Economic Development (Planning) Amos Lugoloobi has said.
Addressing Parliament during a statement on the transition from Tax Identification Numbers (TINs) to National Identification Numbers (NINs) for individual taxpayers, Lugoloobi said the proposed access to bank account information would require separate legal authorisation.
He emphasised that linking a taxpayer’s TIN to their NIN does not automatically give the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) access to their bank accounts.
“You have since refused to accept that, but we shall continue coming until you allow us access to your individual bank accounts,” Lugoloobi told MPs.
The proposal has raised concerns among taxpayers about whether the use of NINs for tax administration could expose their personal financial information to the tax authority. However, Lugoloobi said the identification change does not automatically make someone liable to pay tax.
“The NIN identifies the person. The tax law determines whether that person has a tax obligation and how much tax, if any, is payable,” he said.
The transition follows a 2025 amendment to the Tax Procedures Code Act, which provides for the use of NINs as tax identification numbers for individual taxpayers.
Lugoloobi said the reform is intended to eliminate duplicate records, improve the accuracy of taxpayer information and strengthen tax compliance by ensuring that each person is identified through a single system.
As of 30 June 2026, URA had approximately 5.7 million taxpayers on its register, including 5.4 million individuals. Of these, about 3.3 million were estimated to be active, while 2.1 million records were inactive or difficult to trace.
During the 2025/26 financial year, the authority identified 191,813 duplicate records and 51,993 mutations in its taxpayer register, highlighting some of the challenges caused by maintaining separate identification systems.
By 30 September 2026, URA had linked 2,130,814 NINs to TINs out of 5,405,148 individual taxpayers, representing about 39.4% of the register.
The minister said the transition is being implemented in phases, starting with linking existing TINs to NINs, followed by biometric verification and the updating of taxpayer profiles. The process will eventually lead to taxpayers using NINs to log in to their tax accounts.
During the transition, taxpayers whose identities have been verified will be able to access their accounts using either their TIN or NIN.
