The Assistant Commissioner of Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Mr Dominic Naab, has called on the media to make available their platforms for tax experts to educate the public on taxation and its importance to the country.
According to him, the dearth of appropriate information on tax laws, policies, trends, processes and procedures pertaining to policies and other relevant issues has the potential to affect reportage and make room for misconceptions among the masses.
“A clear example is the enactment of an upfront payment of 12.5 per cent on the customs value of taxable goods at all ports of entry imported by persons who are required by law to register for Value Added Tax (VAT),” he said.
This initiative was misconstrued as a new tax when in actual factit was only a compliance tool to ensure businesses register for VAT,” he explained.
He made the call at a public forum held in Accra on Wednesday as part of the ongoing national efforts to strengthen progressive taxation, domestic resource mobilisation and combating illicit financial flows in the country.
Organised by Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) in collaboration with Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), the forum brought together stakeholders to deliberate on the matter, and seek recommendations to how the media could promote efforts at education on progressive taxation, domestic resource mobilisation, fiscal decentralisation and combating illicit financial flows in the country.
The forum was underthe theme “Improving domestic resource mobilisation and combating illicit financial flows in Ghana: The role of the media and other stakeholders”.
Mr Naab noted that illicit financial flows tend to derail all the efforts of the GRA in mobilising revenue to develop the country.
“Revenue collection in Ghana continues to be a challenging task, especially when we have to introduce new tax policies that will rope in more eligible persons into the tax net or to plug loopholes in the tax net that will ultimately enable GRA to get the right amount of taxes from taxpayers,” he noted.
This, he said, was influenced by factors including the large informal sector, tax evasion, illicit financial flows, money laundering, and a general perception by eligible persons that they were not required to contribute to nation building.
The Assistant Commissioner noted that according to a publication by the African Centre for Energy Policy in 2015 on the Extent and Nature of Illicit Flows in Ghana’s Extractive Sector, someestimated $702 million of illicit financial inflows and $739 million outflows were recorded in the country.
“These figures can be attributed to tax avoidance, tax fraud, money laundering, corruption among others, which we will need all stakeholders, including the media, to address this issue,” he said.
Representing the Deputy Minister of Finance, Director of the Revenue Policy Division, Mr George Swanzy Winful, highlighted as part of its post-COVID-19 economic recovery programme, the government had developed a medium-term revenue strategy to help the economy recover from recession.
He noted the country loses an estimated amount of $340 million annually to illicit financial flows.
The Executive Director of WFWA, Mr Sulemana Braimah, stated that the public forum would contribute to sharpening the knowledge and skills of journalists in accountability reporting while increasing public access to information on progressive taxation, domestic revenue mobilisation and illicit financial flows.
BY CECILIA LAGBA YADA
