Economist, Dr Theo Acheampong, has criticised the Finance Minister for failing to account for previous tax measures but has introduced new taxes in the 2022 budget.
The Economist said although there is nothing wrong with introducing new taxes, it would have been prudent for Mr Ken Ofori-Atta to tell Ghanaians how much the taxes in the 2021 budget yielded and what it was used for.
“I don’t think it is an Agyenkwa [saviour] budget…in the 2021 budget when the Finance Minister came to the House a year ago, he gave a number of tax terms that they were going to collect – Sanitation Levy, COVID Levy etc.
“As we speak currently, in this 2022 budget…there is no mention of how much has been collected from those levies and what those monies have been used for. At the same time there are a raft of tax measures that are being proposed in this 2022 budget,” he said on Joy News’ Newsfile on Saturday, November 20, 2021.
READ ALSO: GH¢5.9bn new loans drive up Ghana’s debt stock to GH¢341.8bn for September 2021
One of the new taxes in the 2022 budget is the 1.75 e-levy now popularly called ‘momo tax’ that has been described by some analysts as retrogressive to the financial inclusion and cash-lite drive.
In Dr Theo Acheampong’s estimation, there seems to be a desire by the government to introduce new taxes to raise revenue, but there is no accountability for past tax initiatives.
“All governments, since I started following the Ghanaian economy have found taxation (raising revenue) as an easy way out rather than addressing the elephant in the room, which is the expenditure…so specifically in the [2022 budget]…there is an attempt to tax that does not support the mantra ‘from taxation to production',” the Political Risk Analyst said.
On the e-levy, he has advised government to exempt charges from bank to mobile wallet transactions.