Economist, Professor Ebo Turkson, has urged government to block revenue leakages that have bedeviled the country’s revenue mobilisation system for ages.
Ghana loses more than GH¢5.6 billion annually in tax revenue.
According to the Economist, till government creates an environment that encourages tax payers to be tax-compliant, the country will continue to lose large volumes of revenue yearly.
He made this suggestion to offer alternatives to the government’s move to introduce new tax measures as a means of reaching an IMF board approval for $3billion bailout.
Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express Business Edition, he said “We need to build systems in place to ensure that we keep to the barest minimum the leakages that leave the revenue stream. And it’s very very important that we do this.”
Citing the situation at Ghana’s ports and habours, he stated that the use of various government agencies to collect taxes and invoices has created space for people to evade taxes rather than comply due to how complicated the system is.
He urged government to ramp up its digitalization drive to put all the tax and invoice requirement on a single government platform to ease business at the ports.
“For instance, the number of government agencies for instance at the ports that are collecting revenue for government, can we reduce the number of them and still getting more of these revenue. Because you see, the more you put in place some of these institutions and these taxes, the easier it is for people to evade those taxes for convenience. So let the process be so straightforward so that tax payers will comply easily so that it doesn’t waste their time,” he said.
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