By Nshimiyimana Fikiri “Electronic Billing Machine usage has reduced the time taken by Taxpayers to comply with Value Added Tax (VAT) obligations mainly in filing tax return by Three hours per declaration (Monthly or Quarterly)”; says RRA Chief Domestic Tax Department Mr Aimable Kayigi, in a meeting with Professional Accountants (ICPAR) and Tax Advisors. Showcasing the positive impact created by the use of EBM in reducing the time taken to file and pay VAT in Rwanda was the main item on the Agenda. “Recent research conducted by RRA has shown that before the introduction of EBM, the total time taken during declaration was 45 hours in a full year, an average of 3h45 minutes per month. After EBM introduction, this time has reduced to 5hours in a year; an average of approximatively 45 minutes per declaration” says Mr Kayigi. “EBM has brought a lot of benefits for both RRA and Taxpayers: it enables traders to produce daily, monthly and annual reports easily, hence reduce the cost of book keeping and paper work since with EBM a taxpayer could just keep soft copies” stated Mr Fred Karara, E-Tax project coordinator in RRA, during his presentation. He guaranteed participant that going forward, VAT refund process will be easy and faster, since the Tax Administration can now smoothly get related business transaction information on time. Miss Vishnumaya R Nambiar, a Tax Advisor for more than five years, congratulated RRA for all the initiatives that it has put in place to make taxpayers life easy. However, she invited RRA to improve on some of them. “The EBM back office sometimes doesn’t get timely information about our transaction, and this brings a difference between sales reported and sales declared” Miss Nambiar noted. A statement acknowledged by the Domestic Tax Commissioner Mr Kayigi, assuring that the matter will soon be solved since RRA is introducing an improved version of EBM (EBM V.2.0), capable of receiving huge amount of data at the same time. As of 4^th April 2018, 306 VAT registered taxpayers used the new EBM version, but the Tax Administration has a target of having more than One Thousand VAT registered taxpayers using this improved version by the end of April 2018.