Dr. Abdallah Ali Nakyea, a tax consultant, has criticised the government for its ongoing tax introductions, claiming that rather from expanding the tax base, the government is instead burdening already overburdened taxpayers with a deeper tax net.
According to him, the additional taxes will have a severe impact on how firms operate, which could result in job losses and have a significant negative effect on the economy.
“Remember, if you impose a tax in every situation, pretty soon everything—even the air we breathe—will be subject to one. Because we are willing to assist the government in resolving the problem, Covid arrived, and we enacted a 1 percent Covid recovery levy. Then there is the financial sector stabilisation charge, which we are paying, so if you are even proposing a new levy, many current levies need to be repealed, Dr. Ali Nakyea said on the Citi Morning Show on Thursday, March 30.
Dr. Nakyea continued, “Because you cannot pass on the expense, you absorb it. For this reason, another GUTA section is suggesting that if you don’t listen and bring it on board, we will not absorb it. And if you can’t pass it on to the price, you pass it backwards, which means you reduce employment and input, which results in downsizing and hurts the economy by forcing unemployment to rise.
The three additional levies are presently being considered by Parliament in an effort to assist the government increase revenue and revive the faltering economy.
- PEC requests that sanitary pad taxes be eliminated.
- Remove some petroleum taxes and levies to avoid hiking inflation rate
The three new taxes include Income Tax (Amendment) Bill, Excise Duty and Excise Tax Stamp (Amendment) Bills and the Growth and Sustainability Levy Bill.
The taxes according to the government will help raise about 4 billion Ghana cedis to help close the fiscal gap and also help the government meet the requirement of the International Monetary Fund to qualify for the bailout.
Meanwhile, the President of the Ghana Traders Association of Ghana (GUTA), Dr Joseph Obeng has called on Parliament not to pass the government’s proposed three new taxes.
Dr. Obeng said businesses may not be to thrive if Parliament passes these new taxes.
Opposing the proposed taxes he said, “we are sending a clear message that unless they [Parliament] represent themselves and that they do not represent the good people of Ghana, especially the business community, then they should go ahead with this. All that we are saying is that they should hold on.
“Let’s evaluate and see where best we can enhance revenue, rather than compound [taxes] on all of us. They [Parliament] should do the needful because it’s not going to help us. Already businesses are dying, and the government wants to ensure local productivity. How do you ensure local productivity when we have these killer taxes?”
