The Ghana Union of Traders (GUTA) says it was happy no new taxes were introduced in the mid-year budget review presented by the Minister of Finance Ken Ofori-Atta, last week.
President of GUTA Dr. Joseph Obeng said it was a piece of welcoming news that no taxes were introduced.
He, however, indicated that it was the expectation tax net would have been widened to allow more people to pay tax.
He revealed they had petitioned the government appealing to it to expand the tax net to cover several others.
He lamented the number of businesses and people paying taxes was less and overburdening them.
He said they have not heard anything from the government on this matter.
He proposed to the government to expand the tax net to cover all those doing business in the E-commerce space.
He asserted that the number of online businesses was in excess compared to traditional business owners, adding the government must consider all these proposals in the next budget.
He also proposed the review of the tax exemption policy since the government was losing over 3 billion Ghana cedis annually.
He said if the review is done, the burden on businesses would reduce drastically.
The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) earlier this year announced that among the GRA’s 2021 strategies to increase its revenue portfolio is aggressive and vigorous taxation of e-commerce this year.
It was expected that implementation would begin from the second quarter of this year, as the first quarter will be used to streamline the regulation and embark on sensitisation.
The GRA is targetting to collect some GHȼ60billion in 2021 to support national expenditure.
By: Rashid Obodai Provencal
