Ofori-Atta: About 60,000 Business People Not Paying Taxes

Ken Ofori-Atta, the Minister for Finance, says an exercise started by the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has shown that roughly 60,000 businesspeople in the country are not paying taxes.

Speaking with Beatrice Adu on The Big Bulletin, Ofori-Atta said, “So, once upon a time, we had 5.5 million Tax Identification Numbers [TINs] … which most of us try to dodge … Now today, because of the National ID, GRA has 15.5 million TINs. Now that’s triple.

“And then we went through the exercise to sort of titrate to see what we’ve got, and we got about 60,000 businesspeople who were not paying taxes.”

He added: “Some 5,000 or 6,000 lawyers are not. Some doctors [are not paying income tax] … so you begin to see all of these professionals, all of us on social media ranting against the government and [realise] that most of these people are not even paying taxes.

“So if you look at the multiplier effect of that … we are currently at about 14% of revenue-to-GDP ratio and our peers are 18% to 21%.”

Funding an agenda

Ofori-Atta added: “If GRA is telling us that we are targeting GHC57 billion for this year, it means that if you have half of that – let’s say GHC30 billion – another GHC30 billion is sitting there somewhere in the wings.

“Now that’s an enormous amount of resources that we can tap in to to be able to fund development projects. And that’s what gives me the excitement and hope that we can really fund this development [agenda].

“The exciting thing, after four years of the administration and being given the mandate for another four years, is that a lot of learning has occurred.

“Usually when we talk about compliance people are quite cynical about that: can GRA step up their game and do much better? So, structurally, we are changing. And thanks to the vice-president’s push on digitisation, we are getting there,” he said.

Revenue mobilisation

The government is poised to roll out measures to mobilise more revenue for its flagship programmes.

Presenting the 2021 Mid-Year Budget Review on 29 July, the Finance Minister said that the government is aware of the critical importance of raising additional revenue to implement the national recovery and transformation agenda.

“We are therefore transforming the Ghana Revenue Authority [GRA] to drive our quest for burden-sharing and sustainable revenue mobilisation.”

Ofori-Atta said the transformation agenda is not just about mobilising more: it is equally about mobilising sustainably with the help of technology.

In delivering the Budget Review, Ofori-Atta was at pains to point out that he was not asking for parliamentary approval for additional money. The government was proud to defend its performance in the first half of the year under review, the minister said.

“I am not here today to ask for more money. I have not come to ask for more taxes. I have come to update the House on the performance of the economy for the first half-year of 2021 and our plans for the unexpired term of the year,” he said.

He said the government is building robust and integrated data systems under the Ghana CARES/Obaatanpa programme to advance the cause of raising more revenue.

Source: asaaseradio.com

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