A Fiscal Policy analyst at OXFAM Ghana, Dr. Alex Ampabeng, has urged the government to account for earmarked taxes better if it wants tax compliance to improve.
“Government accountability around taxation is very weak and that itself does not enhance compliance,” Dr. Ampabeng noted on The Big Issue.
The past week has seen traders in fast-moving goods close their shops in protest of the structure and enforcement of the Value Added Tax.
The Ghana Revenue Authority was also compelled to close down 13 shopping centres because they did not link their systems to an E-VAT Invoicing system that will certify all invoices and give real-time reporting of sales.
But Dr. Ampabeng intimated that these compliance issues were because of a lack of faith in the State.
He cited the sanitation levy as an example of a tax that the government has not adequately accounted for.
“Can we really sit down and ask ourselves what has government done with that revenue? If you cannot account, compliance will suffer. We cannot talk about tax payment without saying what the taxes are used for.”
“When people start seeing this, they will comply. People want to see that the taxes they are paying are not going down the drain,” he said.
