News:
March 7, 2019
The Speaker of Parliament, Prof Aaron Michael Oquaye has expressed concern about the attitude of informal sector businesses that fail to pay their taxes who he said are making life difficult for successive governments.
Addressing members of community based Youth Parliament from the Northern region who paid a courtesy call on him on what contributions young people make for national development, the Speaker urged the need for the tax net to be widen for the informal sector businesses to pay taxes.
“When you talk about expenditure, then you also talk about taxation and not only just increasing taxes, but widening the tax scope so that we can get more people to pay taxes.
As we sit in this country, one of our difficulties is that too few people are paying all the taxes that hold the country.
Those in the informal sector, they think they are getting away with paying taxes but they are rather making life difficult for successive government and in providing social services, it does not help anybody in the long run, you want something to be done and you also want to contribute to the ways and means of arriving at that particular goal” he said.
Statistics from the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) indicates that only 1.5 million of the expected six million taxpayers honour their tax responsibilities to the state, with 200,000 being from the informal sector.
The informal sector constitutes 70 percent of the business arena – but just two percent of them pay their taxes.
The Speaker commended the youth Parliamentarians for being thematic in their discourse on National issues whiles encouraging them to continue to examine issues from a nationalistic point of view.
He challenged them to be research minded, inquisitive and be ready to burn the midnight candle so that they can meaningfully contribute to national development.
Christian Kpesese/ ghanamps.com