Having a National Identification Number (NIN) will not automatically make a person liable to pay tax, the government has said as Uganda moves to replace individual Tax Identification Numbers (TINs).
State Minister for Planning Amos Lugoloobi told Parliament that the change concerns identification. Tax obligations will still depend on a person’s income, economic activity and the applicable laws.
“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.
Lugoloobi presented the statement on behalf of the Finance minister during Thursday’s plenary sitting chaired by Speaker Jacob Marksons Oboth.
The reform follows a 2025 amendment to Section 4 of the Tax Procedures Code Act, which provides for individuals to use their NINs for tax identification.
The change seeks to address gaps in Uganda Revenue Authority’s taxpayer register. As of June 30, 2026, the register contained about 5.7 million taxpayers, including 5.4 million individuals.
However, only about 3.3 million individual taxpayers were estimated to be active. Another 2.1 million records were inactive or difficult to trace.
Lugoloobi said separate national and tax identification numbers had contributed to duplication and inconsistent records. During the 2025/26 financial year, URA identified 191,813 duplicate records and 51,993 changes described in the statement as mutations.
He illustrated the potential revenue implications by assuming that each of the 2.1 million individuals was economically active and liable to pay an average of Shs200,000 annually. That would yield about Shs420 billion a year.
But he cautioned that the figure did not represent confirmed tax losses. Any liability would depend on each person’s circumstances and the law.
The government will implement the transition in three stages. URA will first link existing TINs to NINs, then verify taxpayers’ biometrics and update their profiles. The final phase will introduce full access to tax accounts through NIN-based login.
By September 30, 2026, URA had linked 2,130,814 NINs to TINs, covering about 39.4 per cent of the 5,405,148 individual taxpayers on its register.
Verified taxpayers will be able to use either number during the transition. The government will determine when to complete the switch after assessing progress in the first two phases.
Taxpayers can update their details through URA outreach programmes, service centres or its online portal.
For companies and other registered entities, the government intends to use registration numbers issued by the Uganda Registration Services Bureau, subject to approval. Foreign taxpayers will use the applicable identification arrangements.
Lugoloobi also disclosed that Uganda’s first Automatic Exchange of Information exercise in September 2025 identified about 120,000 offshore financial accounts held by Ugandan tax residents. The accounts had a combined reported value of about Shs7 trillion.
Preliminary analysis uniquely identified about 20,000 taxpayers. The reported account values do not, by themselves, establish a tax liability.
The government says the identification reform will reduce duplicate records, strengthen compliance and simplify access to services. It has pledged a gradual transition to maintain access to URA services.
