Prime News Ghana

Millions lost to tax evasions cripple the cedi & make cost of doing business high – Albert Kan-Dapaah

By Clement Edward Kumsah
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Albert Kan Dapaah
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Head of University of Professional Studies Centre for Public Accountability, Albert Kan-Dapaah, has raised concerns over poor revenue collection practice by authorities, culminating in government losing millions of income to entities every year.

According to KanDapaah, over six million registered taxpayers were expected to pay income tax to government but only two million performed such duty last year, leaving a whopping four million taxpayers to walk around freely without paying levy.

These concerns were expressed when Mr Kan-Dapaah addressed participants on “the New Public Financial Management Law: A comprehensive Law On Fiscal Responsibility”, at the National Forum on Open Governance.

Speaking at a forum organized by Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), a local chapter of Transparency International, on the topic: “Building An Open Government In Ghana, Why Open Governance Matters?”

He noted, the evasion of tax by taxpayers was substantially contributing to high cost of doing business in the country and the instability associated with the local currency and its associated cost on the national economy.

“I think our tax collection agencies are not doing well, the Ghana Revenue Authority should go out there and collect the monies, we have the capacity to increase our tax revenue,” Mr. Kan-Dapaah said.

He stated, the situation arose largely because Ghanaians were too defensive of each other and so decline to report wrongdoers to appropriate agencies for the required punitive sanctions to be applied.

“There is only one solution to solve the problem of corruption in this country, that is [punitive] sanctions, we should also be honest to report corrupt acts, but we are too protective of each other,” he said.

He expressed concern that the activity of public financial management has been the same over the years saying “the real governance challenge that we have as a nation and the way forward is open governance, citizens must have all the information that they need.”

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