The short answer
A tax agent in Uganda is a person or firm registered with Uganda Revenue Authority to act for a taxpayer: to file returns, to object to an assessment, and to represent the business in a dispute. Growth Informer Software Services is registered with URA as a tax agent.
If URA has already sent you something, the calendar decides more than anything else on this page. An objection to an assessment is due within 45 days of the notice. A monthly VAT or PAYE return is due by the 15th of the following month. An application to the Tax Appeals Tribunal is due within 30 days of the Commissioner's decision on your objection. Work out which of those three you are in before you do anything else, because every option below depends on it.
What a URA-registered tax agent can do for you: EFRIS and VAT set-up and training on your own systems, VAT, PAYE and other return filing, help when a penalty or assessment lands, objections to assessments, and representation in a dispute. We quote after seeing the notice or your books, because a first VAT registration and a live Tax Appeals Tribunal case are not the same job, and we publish no fixed price for tax work here. This page explains the rules; it is not tax advice on your own position, and for a ruling on that go to URA directly or confirm with a registered tax adviser.
Find your situation
Five situations bring most people to this page. Find yours in the table, then read the section below it for the first steps, the deadline, the records to gather, and what we do.
| Your situation | The deadline that matters | What we do |
|---|---|---|
| A penalty or assessment has landed | 45 days from the notice to object | Review it, confirm the grounds, gather the evidence, file the objection |
| URA has asked for records | The date on URA's own letter | Assemble and check the records against what was actually asked for |
| Not registered for VAT or EFRIS and should be | Before URA's own review reaches you | Register you, set EFRIS or VAT up on your system, and train your team |
| A VAT or PAYE return is due | 15th of the following month | File and pay on time, and apply for an extension of time to file where one is available |
| You disagree with the Commissioner's objection decision | 30 days to apply to the Tax Appeals Tribunal, extendable to 6 months on request | Prepare the application, the UGX 22,000 filing fee and the deposit |
Miss a date in the middle column and the options narrow fast. Most of URA's dispute process gives no second chance once a deadline passes, with the single exception in the last row.
A penalty or assessment has landed
First steps. Read the notice for the exact tax period, the amount, and the date it was issued, not the date you opened the letter. If you disagree with it, you have 45 days from receiving the notice to lodge a written objection with URA, through the URA online portal or a URA office. The objection has to include a letter of objection stating your grounds and all your supporting evidence, so it is not a form you send first and explain later. The burden of proof sits with you: you must show the assessment is wrong, URA does not have to show it is right.
Records to gather before you write anything. The notice itself, your TIN, the sales invoices and EFRIS receipts for the period, the purchase invoices behind any input VAT or expense being questioned, and the bank and mobile money statements covering the same months. Objections fail on missing documents far more often than on bad arguments.
Two rules work in your favour, and most people never hear about them. First, once a valid objection is in, the Commissioner General must serve a written objection decision within 90 days. A decision served late risks being struck down, and under the law a taxpayer can elect to treat a decision that misses the 90 days as one that allowed the objection. Diarise the 90th day the moment you file. Second, in Airtel Uganda Ltd v Uganda Revenue Authority, Civil Appeal No. 40 of 2013, the Court of Appeal held on 12 November 2019 that once a taxpayer has objected and paid the required 30% deposit, URA cannot lawfully charge interest or penalties that accrue specifically while the objection or appeal is pending. With interest on unpaid VAT running at 2% a month, compounded, that is worth real money on a dispute that drags. The interest and penalty provisions of the Tax Procedures Code Act have been amended more than once since that judgment, so raise the case, but ask URA or your adviser to confirm it still applies to your own period rather than assuming it.
If you still disagree with the decision. You have 30 days from being served it to apply to the Tax Appeals Tribunal, and the Tribunal can extend that to up to 6 months on request. The application needs a non-refundable UGX 22,000 filing fee and a deposit of 30% of the tax assessed, or the tax not in dispute, whichever is the greater. That deposit rule was reported in 2026 as facing a Constitutional Court challenge, so confirm where it stands with URA or the Tribunal before you budget for it. After filing you must serve a copy on the Commissioner General within 5 days, URA then has 30 days to file its response, and the parties get at least 14 days notice of a hearing. An appeal from the Tribunal goes to the High Court within 30 days, and only on questions of law, not on the facts. Decided cases and the fuller process are on our VAT and EFRIS disputes page.
If the debt is old, check this before you pay a shilling. From 1 July 2026 a tax amnesty waives all outstanding principal tax, penal tax and interest that was owed as at 30 June 2016 and was still unpaid, with no condition to pay the principal first. If any part of what URA is chasing dates from before 30 June 2016, ask URA whether it qualifies. See every 2026 tax change for what else moved this year.
What we do. Review the assessment against your records, tell you honestly whether the grounds for objection are strong, draft and file the objection inside the 45 days, and represent you through the Commissioner's decision and, if it goes that far, the Tribunal. What happens next depends on the notice itself, and we tell you the realistic options once we have seen it, not before. We do not promise an outcome, because none can honestly be promised.
URA has asked for records
First steps. Read the request for the exact records asked for and the date they are due. URA's own letter sets that date and it is the one that matters, not a general rule. Send what was asked for and nothing more; volunteering your whole filing system invites questions about periods nobody was looking at.
The deadline behind the deadline. Under the Tax Procedures Code Act you must keep tax records for five years after the end of the tax period they relate to, and longer where an audit, objection or appeal that began inside those five years is still running. That usually means the records exist somewhere already and the work is assembling and checking them, not creating them from nothing. If a period URA is asking about is more than five years old, say so rather than reconstructing figures from memory.
Records to gather. Sales invoices and EFRIS receipts, purchase invoices, bank and mobile money statements, payroll records and NSSF schedules, and the returns already filed for the period, so what you hand over agrees with what URA already holds. Check them against the letter before anything is submitted, because the first inconsistency sets the tone for everything after it. See audit preparation for the fuller checklist.
What we do. Help gather and check the records URA has asked for, agree with you what goes and what does not, and represent you if the review raises further questions. What we need from you: the request letter itself and access to the books for the period covered.
A VAT or EFRIS deadline is close, or you should be registered and are not
First steps: check two things. Are you required to register for VAT, which from 1 July 2026 applies once annual taxable turnover exceeds UGX 300 million, up from UGX 150 million? And are you in one of URA's 12 EFRIS sectors, which since 1 July 2025 must issue e-invoices or e-receipts whether or not they are VAT registered, once annual turnover reaches UGX 10 million? Either one on its own means EFRIS applies now. Our free do I need EFRIS checker settles it in about two minutes.
What it costs to be late. A VAT return filed late carries a penalty of UGX 200,000, and interest on unpaid VAT runs at 2% a month, compounded, for every month or part month it stays unpaid. Separately, from 1 July 2026 the EFRIS non-compliance penalty is double the tax due or UGX 200,000, whichever is higher, replacing the older fixed minimums that ran into millions. The EFRIS penalty is calculated on the tax, so it grows with the size of the sale you failed to receipt.
Put a number on that 2%. UGX 10,000,000 of VAT left unpaid grows to UGX 11,261,624 after six months and UGX 12,682,418 after twelve, so the interest alone is UGX 1,261,624 and then UGX 2,682,418, before the UGX 200,000 filing penalty and before anything URA assesses on top. Compounding is why an old URA balance is rarely worth leaving alone while you decide what to do about it, and why the first useful step is almost always filing the return even when the money to pay it is not there yet.
One decision the higher threshold created. A VAT-registered business now below UGX 300 million may apply online through the URA portal to deregister, subject to URA reviewing its records. That ends monthly VAT returns, and it also ends the right to claim input VAT, so it is worth the arithmetic rather than the relief. It does not end EFRIS duties either: a business in one of the 12 sectors with turnover of UGX 10 million or more would simply issue e-receipts instead of e-invoices. See who must use EFRIS and how VAT works in Uganda for the full rules.
What we do. EFRIS and VAT set-up and training on your own systems, so registration and the first filings are handled correctly the first time rather than corrected after a penalty. What we need from you: your current turnover, your sector, and whatever you sell through today, even if that is a notebook.
You just want the filings handled
First steps: list what is actually due and when. VAT and PAYE are both due by the 15th of the following month once you are registered for either. NSSF, 15% of gross pay in total, 10% employer and 5% employee, is due the same date, and every employer with at least one employee must be registered. Local Service Tax deducted from employees must reach the local authority of the employee's residence by 31 October, and late or non-remittance carries a penalty of 50% of the tax due. Put all four in one calendar, not four.
What late costs. A late VAT return carries a UGX 200,000 penalty plus 2% a month of compounding interest on the tax. The late-filing penalty for PAYE is widely described as UGX 200,000 or 2% of the unpaid tax a month, whichever is higher, plus the same interest, but we could not confirm that figure against a primary source, so confirm the current PAYE penalty with URA before relying on it. The same applies to an extension: URA can grant extra time to file on application, commonly described as capped at 90 days and never changing the date the tax itself has to be paid. Ask URA for the current rule rather than assuming it.
What we do. Take over the recurring filing calendar, VAT, PAYE and other returns, so nothing is late because someone forgot a date. See the PAYE guide for the 2026 bands, including the tax-free threshold that rose to UGX 335,000 a month from 1 July 2026. What we need from you: ongoing access to your sales and payroll records, or a system that already produces them.
What government charges, what we charge
Government fees for the steps that sit next to this work are fixed and published. A Tax Appeals Tribunal application costs a non-refundable UGX 22,000 filing fee, on top of the 30% deposit rule above. Getting a TIN from URA costs nothing, and an individual with a National ID can get one online in about five minutes. Registering for VAT and applying to register for EFRIS carry no direct URA charge either, figures checked September 2026. Consultants commonly charge a fee to fill in those same online forms on a client's behalf, which is worth knowing before you pay one.
We publish no price for tax agent work on this page. A first VAT registration, a monthly filing arrangement, and representation at the Tax Appeals Tribunal are different jobs with different amounts of work, so we quote after seeing your notice or your books, and the quote is fixed before we start.
Message us on WhatsApp at +256 702 946 946 with whatever URA has sent you, or simply with the filings you want taken off your plate. We reply within 6 hours and set up a meeting for the next day.
Frequently asked questions
What does a tax agent do in Uganda?
A tax agent registered with URA acts for a taxpayer: setting up and training a business on EFRIS and VAT on its own systems, filing VAT, PAYE and other returns, and representing the business in an objection or at the Tax Appeals Tribunal if a dispute goes that far. We are registered with URA as a tax agent and quote for each piece of work after seeing the notice or the books.
I have a URA penalty. What do I do first?
Read the notice for the exact period, the amount and the date it was issued. If you disagree with an assessment you have 45 days from receiving it to lodge a written objection, with your grounds stated and your evidence attached, through the URA online portal or a URA office. Gather the invoices, EFRIS receipts and bank or mobile money statements for the period before you write anything, because the burden of proof is on you.
What happens if URA does not decide my objection within 90 days?
The Commissioner General must serve a written objection decision within 90 days of receiving a valid objection. A decision served late risks being struck down, and under the law a taxpayer can elect to treat a decision that misses the 90 days as one that allowed the objection. Diarise the 90th day when you file, and raise it if the date passes.
What is a tax objection and how long do I have to file one?
A tax objection is a written challenge to a URA assessment, lodged through the URA online portal or a URA office within 45 days of the notice, stating your grounds and attaching your evidence. The burden is on you to show the assessment is wrong. If you disagree with the Commissioner's decision on your objection, you then have 30 days to apply to the Tax Appeals Tribunal, which the Tribunal can extend to up to 6 months on request.
How much does it cost to take URA to the Tax Appeals Tribunal?
The filing fee is a non-refundable UGX 22,000. Before the Tribunal will entertain the case you must also pay 30% of the tax assessed, or the tax not in dispute, whichever is greater. That deposit rule was reported in 2026 as facing a Constitutional Court challenge, so confirm where it stands with URA or the Tribunal before budgeting for it.
How much does a tax consultant or tax agent charge in Uganda?
It depends on the work: a one-off VAT or EFRIS registration, an ongoing monthly filing arrangement, and representation at the Tax Appeals Tribunal are different jobs. We quote after seeing your notice or your books rather than publishing a fixed figure here, and the quote is fixed before work starts.
Is Growth Informer Software Services affiliated with or endorsed by URA?
No. We are registered with URA as a tax agent, which lets us act on a client's behalf for filings, objections and representation. That is a registration to practise, not an endorsement of our work by URA, and nothing on this page should be read as one.