Q&A – 20 April 2015
Immigration refusing to accept my citizenship
I was born in Tanzania about 50 years ago from Indian parents who had become citizens by then. I went for renewal to immigration some months ago and was told that since I am of Indian descent, notwithstanding that I am born in Tanzania, I would need to apply for citizenship. They said my passport was issued in error. Not only am I confused but I am flabbergasted at this. Can this be true? I have been now given forms to fill to apply for citizenship! Is this another way of extracting money?
ET, Dar
Our research reveals that this has now become a going trend at the immigration department. Whether it is a money spinner or not, we are not able to answer. However the law is clear. If you are born in Tanzania, and your parent was (or is) a Tanzanian, you are automatically a Tanzanian. Your case is straight forward- in our opinion the immigration department is wrong and you should get your renewal. You may take this up with the Minister.
Even if your parent was at the time not a Tanzanian but subsequently became a Tanzanian, you will still be entitled to citizenship by birth. The law is clear on this.
TRA after me
Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) has been after one of our suppliers for certain VAT issues that we are not party not nor do we want to know more about. Our supplier states that it has done nothing wrong. This time TRA has issued us with a notice to make all payments to TRA instead of the supplier. The supplier states this is illegal and it will sue us in case we make such payments as the contract is between the supplier and us and TRA does not enter into the picture. TRA has now unfairly started aggressively pursuing us for payment. Are we obliged to pay? What if the amounts are in dispute?
EB, Dar
The VAT Act is clear in that where any tax or interest due from a taxable person remains unpaid, the Commissioner may, by notice in writing, require any other person to make such payment.
The VAT Act then states that when such a notice is served, the debt is due to the Commissioner General of TRA and not to the supplier meaning that once you pay amounts owed to the supplier you have, under Tanzanian law, already paid your supplier. This is to avoid making double payments.
If the Supplier believes it is not liable to pay VAT, it should sort this out with the TRA either by filing objection proceedings with the Commissioner General, or appealing this decision to the Tax Revenue Appeals Board. Meanwhile, you upon whom this notice is served, must comply with the notice otherwise you will be held liable. There is no illegality here either on the TRAs part nor on your part when you remit the funds.
Much as you will not want to hear this, TRA has a right to pursue these amounts from you. Unless this notice is vacated, we recommend that you pay such amounts within the time frame on the notice. If the amounts payable to your supplier are in dispute, you should immediately pay TRA that amount that is not in dispute. In our opinion, at this juncture amounts in dispute, so long as they are genuinely in dispute and the dispute has not been arrived at to derail TRAs efforts to collect the VAT, do not form part of amounts to be paid to TRA.
If you don’t cooperate you should not expect cooperation from TRA who has the mandate and powers to aggressively pursue you to ensure taxes are collected.
Creation of new English words
I am a researcher and poet and have been able to think of many new words that will help the English language which I find is not changing fast enough to meet today’s rapidly changing world. Does Tanzania have a law that allows injection of such words into the English world? How are words introduced in the English language.
YR, Lindi
At the outset you must note that there is no law that governs this and this is not a legal question but we attempt to answer it as it is an interesting question. In answering this, we turned to the oxford dictionary website which has a discussion on how new words are entered into the oxford dictionary. This is what the oxford dictionary states and we quote.
“Every year hundreds of new English words and expressions emerge: we need to keep track of them and choose which ones to add to our dictionaries.
Oxford University Press has one of the largest and most wide-ranging language research programmes in the world. It’s based on the contributions of an international network of readers who are on the lookout for instances of new words and meanings or other language changes. We continually monitor the Corpus and the Reading Programme to track new words coming into the language: when we have evidence of a new term being used in a variety of different sources (not just by one writer) it becomes a candidate for inclusion in one of our dictionaries.
New terms have to be recorded in a print or online source before they can be considered: it’s not enough just to hear them in conversation or on television, although we do analyse material from Internet message boards and TV scripts.
It used to be the case that a new term had to be used over a period of two or three years before we could consider adding it to a print dictionary. In today’s digital age, the situation has changed. New terms can achieve enormous currency with a wide audience in a much shorter space of time, and people expect to find these new ‘high-profile’ words in their dictionaries.
People often send us words they have made up and ask if we will add their invented terms to one of our dictionaries.
Unfortunately, the answer is probably no.”