News:
July 23, 2018
Parliament would today start debate on the Mid-Year review budget presented to the House last week Thursday by the Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta.
Member of Parliament for Ho Central Benjamin Kpodo in an interview with ghanamps.com has said Ghanaians should expect a detailed explanation of what was presented to the House and understanding of how the economy is being managed.
Both the Majority and the Minority would have time to debate the 68 page document presented to the House.
As to whether the views being expressed by the Minority they are playing politics with the economy of Ghana, the Ho Central legislator said “no, we are saying that there are other avenue which we can enhance our revenue and there are other areas we can cut down on our expenditure”.
Mr. Benjamin Kpodo further noted that as a nation we have passed laws imposing several taxes, but what measures are we putting in place to collect all these taxes, it is one difficulty as a nation, “it did not start from this current government”, he lamented.
Property tax is one huge source of income for Ghana, but do we collect it from everybody, the appropriate amount is not collected from those who qualify to pay, he said.
And cited an example of Managing Director of Dalex Financial Service, who had requested the local Assembly in his areas to come for a property from him, it had been over a year nobody had attempted to collect the property tax.
Again there is a lot of money out there, the service sector of the economy is heavily under taxed, simply because we do not go out there to collect the money, hotels and restaurants they do not pay the appropriate taxes.
“We should find innovative ways of collecting these taxes in the system, we do not new laws, let us implement the existing ones”, he lamented.
By: Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/ghanamps.com