The Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) has called on the government to reconsider its plan to introduce three new taxes.
Describing such taxes are obnoxious, GUTA said they will bring more burden on the business community which is already in distress.
The call follows reports of three new taxes currently before Parliament for consideration to help government shore up more revenue to salvage the ailing economy.
The three new taxes are Income Tax (Amendment) Bill, Excise Duty and Excise Tax Stamp (Amendment) Bills as well as the Growth and Sustainability Levy Bill.
A statement signed by the president of GUTA, Dr. Joseph Obeng said the taxes in question will have rippling and cascading effects on businesses, especially SMEs.
“The Government in 2017, realizing the importance of lessening the tax burden on businesses, removed what were deemed to be nuisance taxes.
As of now, these nuisance taxes are creeping back in various forms and folds seriously suffocating businesses in the country to death.
What is more worrying is that these taxes are being piled on a few recognizable business companies and individual business entities.
Moreover, some of these taxes have rippling and cascading effects on businesses, especially SMEs, thereby militating against their growth and survival.
Business Community in the country has done its best in terms of tax payment. Against all odds and the challenges in 2022, the government was able to exceed its revenue target. Therefore, if the government wants to increase its revenue base, the best way is to adopt innovative means to capture those businesses outside the tax net, review policies on tax exemptions, warehousing, free zones etc. to curtail the abuses, as well as prune down expenditure.
The continuous attribution of the economic challenges of the country to the global phenomena of covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine War can no longer be overstressed because the pandemic is now a new normal, with no end in sight for the Russia-Ukraine war. Besides that, businesses are the worst affected by the phenomena and deserve sympathy from the government.
As inflation rate reduces, we expected that the monetary policy rate too will come down, but unfortunately, that is not the case.
It is important to state that, currently, doing business in Ghana is extremely costly and suffocating. This makes us irrelevant in the scheme of affairs in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), as well as cross-border trade within our sub-regional bloc.
Our worst fear is that, if care is not taken to reduce the unbearable tax burden on businesses, it will collapse businesses, increase poverty, and create insecurity in the country.
On this note, we wish to appeal to our Honourable Members of Parliament to, as a matter of urgency carefully and properly analyze this issue of taxes and do the needful to save this country from crisis.”
