The Ugandan government has officially approved the adoption of the National Identification Number (NIN) as the default Tax Identification Number (TIN) for citizens, replacing the traditional, standalone tax registration process in a major reform aimed at harmonising identity data, streamlining compliance, and curbing persistent tax evasion.
Speaking to journalists at the Uganda Media Centre in Kampala on Tuesday, September 1, 2026, Minister of ICT and National Guidance Justine Kasule Lumumba confirmed the Cabinet directive, highlighting it as a critical reform for modernising public administration and revenue processing.
“Cabinet has approved the use of the National Identification Number, the NIN issued by NIRA, as the Tax Identification Number going forward,” Lumumba stated.
“For years, our tax registration system has relied on a separate, largely manual TIN-based process. It has served its purpose, but it has also left us with outdated and inconsistent records, and that creates real weaknesses in data accuracy, compliance, and service delivery.”
Uganda has long struggled with a narrow tax base and low tax-to-GDP ratios, which hover around 13 to 14 percent significantly below the Sub-Saharan African average. The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) faces structural hurdles, including a massive informal economy, data mismatches across state agencies, and widespread non-compliance.
Historically, maintaining two separate identity frameworks under NIRA and URA made it easy for informal earnings and asset transactions to bypass taxation unnoticed. Integrating the NIN directly into the tax infrastructure is designed to bridge these gaps by creating a single, verified database for every economically active citizen.
“By adopting the NIN as the tax identification number, we are establishing one consistent identity for every taxpayer,” Lumumba explained. “This will improve the accuracy of our taxpayer register, strengthen our ability to identify and trace taxpayers, and make our data systems work better together.”
She added that the reform will reduce revenue leakages while offering visibility into global earnings and simplifying service delivery for citizens. “It will help us improve compliance, reduce revenue leakage, and make it simpler for citizens to register and communicate with the tax authorities,” Lumumba said.
“It will also give us visibility into worldwide income, and more broadly, it strengthens our national identification system as a whole. This is about building a single, reliable foundation of identity that helps government plan and deliver programmes more effectively for our people.”
The transition comes as the government pushes to aggressively scale up domestic revenue collection to fund national budget demands and reduce reliance on borrowing. With the NIN now serving as the unified anchor for citizen identity, revenue collectors expect seamless interoperability between land registries, banking networks, and business licensing authorities.
The reform is expected to significantly improve the accuracy of taxpayer records, enhance the ability to identify and trace taxpayers, and strengthen the overall effectiveness of the tax system. By leveraging the existing NIN database, the government aims to bring more citizens into the formal tax net and increase overall compliance.
