The Ministry of Finance has assured taxpayers that linking their National Identification Numbers (NINs) to tax records will not automatically make them liable to pay taxes, saying tax obligations will continue to be determined by the law.
State Minister for Planning Amos Lugoloobi delivered the assurance to Parliament on Thursday on behalf of the Minister of Finance, during a plenary sitting chaired by Speaker Jacob Marksons Oboth.
“The NIN identifies the person. The tax law determines whether that person has a tax obligation and how much tax, if any, is payable,” Lugoloobi told Parliament.
The transition follows a 2025 amendment to Section 4 of the Tax Procedures Code Act, which provides for the use of the NIN as the tax identification number for individual taxpayers.
According to the ministry, the reform is intended to eliminate duplication in taxpayer records, improve identification and strengthen tax administration without creating new tax obligations solely because a person’s national identification details have been linked to tax records.
The Uganda Revenue Authority’s (URA) taxpayer register contained approximately 5.7 million records as of June 30, 2026, including about 5.4 million individuals. Of these, approximately 3.3 million individual taxpayers were estimated to be active, leaving about 2.1 million records classified as inactive or difficult to trace.
Lugoloobi said maintaining separate identification numbers for national identification and tax administration had contributed to duplication and inconsistencies in the taxpayer register.
During the 2025/26 financial year, URA identified 191,813 duplicate records and 51,993 mutations in the register.
The minister said the 2.1 million inactive or difficult-to-trace individual records represented a potential revenue opportunity if the individuals were economically active and liable to pay tax.
He illustrated the potential using an assumption that each person could contribute an average of Shs200,000 annually, which would translate into Shs420 billion a year.
However, Lugoloobi cautioned that the figure was illustrative and did not represent an estimate of actual tax revenue lost. Whether an individual owes tax depends on their income, economic activity and the applicable tax laws.
The minister also cited Uganda’s first Automatic Exchange of Information exercise in September 2025, which identified approximately 120,000 offshore financial accounts held by Ugandan tax residents, with a combined reported value of about Shs7 trillion. Preliminary analysis uniquely identified approximately 20,000 taxpayers.
Transition to be implemented in phases
The government is implementing the NIN-TIN transition in three phases: mapping existing tax identification numbers to national identification numbers, verifying taxpayers biometrically and updating their profiles, and eventually moving to NIN-based taxpayer login.
As of September 30, 2026, a total of 2,130,814 NINs had been mapped to TINs out of 5,405,148 individual taxpayer records, representing approximately 39.4% of the register.
During the transition, verified taxpayers will be able to access their tax accounts using either their existing TINs or their NINs. Full implementation will depend on an assessment of progress in the first two phases.
Taxpayers can update their information through URA outreach programmes, walk-in services at its service centres and the authority’s online portal.
For companies and other registered entities, the government intends to use registration numbers issued by the Uganda Registration Services Bureau, subject to the necessary approvals. Foreign taxpayers will continue to use applicable identification arrangements.
The ministry said the reform seeks to establish a “one person, one identity” system, improve the accuracy of taxpayer records, reduce duplication, strengthen compliance and simplify access to government services.
It added that implementation would be gradual to minimise inconvenience and maintain taxpayers’ access to URA services.