Development experts in Ghana have called on the country’s government to reintroduce Tax Exemptions Bill to parliament for approval.

The bill, which was laid before the country’s seventh parliament for approval in 2019, seeks to harmonise the tax exemption and incentives regime in the country and help make it more efficient.

But the seventh parliament did not work on it until its life span expired.

Ghana, according to local media reports, lost an estimated $2.4 billion in 2011 alone due to tax exemptions. The figure grew to $2.5 billion in 2013, representing 5.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

It is understood that a new finance minister would have to lay the bill before parliament again for approval to begin.

‘We need to push so that the executive brings it back for the new parliament to sit on… so that the new government finds reason to bring it back to the house’, Programme Manager at Parliamentary Network Africa, Gilbert Boyefio, said.

For his part, Coordinator at Tax Justice Coalition, Bernard Anaba, said tax exemptions would boost economic activity.

‘Every ministry is getting exemptions. It has come to a stage where these incentives are given at the ministerial level’, Anaba said.

‘And we are losing track of what we are giving at which level and who is following up on this and making sure that what we are giving out is what we are supposed to give and we are not giving out too much.

‘The finance minister, who is supposed to champion this, gets lost in its multiplicity. So, the objective of the bill is to regularise the current exemption regime on taxes and consolidating existing regimes on tax and provide for the regulation of exemptions.

‘It is to rationalise the exemption regime. The finance minister should be able to account for the incentives’.

In 2019, Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta lamented that the nation was losing too much money from tax exemptions, noting that tax exemptions grew from 391.9 million cedis to ¢4.662 billion.

Source: Joy Online

Photo source: WACSI