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Politicians across the political divide, Academia, Civil Society Organizations/Policy Think-tanks, Media Practitioners, Professionals in diverse industries/fields and the masses have agreed on widening the tax net of Ghana to shore up the revenue mobilization efforts of the Country.
The electronic transactions platform such as Mobile Money via MTN, Vodafone, AirtelTigo are the only platforms in the Country, where both formal and informal sectors of the economy are vibrantly located, Mr Razak Kojo Opoku, member of the New Patriotic Party has said.
In a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra on Monday, Mr Opoku said most Ghanaians believed that for Ghana to be self-sufficient, the Country had to broaden its tax base by concurrently extending the tax net to include the formal and informal sectors of the economy to enhance domestic revenue mobilization, sustain ongoing developmental projects and pro-poor policies such as Free SHS and Continue pro-youth programmes under NEIP, GEA, NAELP, NABCO, YEA.
That he added would stop the over dependence on loans from IMF, World Bank and others in exchange for unnecessary conditionalities resulting in freezing employment in the Public Sector and reducing dependence on foreign aid and donor support from other sovereign Countries.
He said since Independence, Ghana had suffered from perennial deficits as far as the Country’s Budgets are concerned due to the low domestic tax revenue mobilization, leakages in tax generation and poor public financial management systems.
“The most important single remedy for these problems is the adoption and implementation of robust digital solution to broaden/expand/widen the tax net as well as to plug the loopholes in the tax collection, thereby reducing wastage, achieving transparency, efficiency and accountability.”
He said the E-Levy implementation by Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) in partnership with the Telecommunications companies and the financial institutions would help to ensure accurate data of revenue collected and the citizens would equally have the opportunity to play an oversight role as far as revenue accrued from E-levy was concerned.
“Therefore, it will purely be an act of dishonesty, for anyone particularly NDC members to fight against E-levy, a policy in fulfillment of expanding the tax base of the Country.”
