The Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Reverend Dr Ammisshadai Owusu-Amoah, has urged the public and the business community to make tax payment a religious obligation.
He said it was important to honour their tax obligations as commanded in the
scriptures so the public could hold government accountable for it.
Rev. Owusu-Amoah gave the advice in an address read on his behalf by Assistant
Commissioner at the Office of the Commissioner-General, Dominic Naab, at a GIZ
Validation Workshop with the National Steering Committee on the Inter-Faith
Platform on Accountability in Accra.
“The GRA is mandated to administer and collect domestic taxes to fund budget
expenditure. The question we all need to ask is: are we all paying taxes?
Should we be declaring our sources of income and declaring tax to be paid? Are
we fulfilling our civic obligations by supporting government to carry out its
work?” he quizzed.
Importance of taxation
He noted that taxation was undoubtedly the bedrock of every society, and,
therefore, citizens were obliged by law to pay taxes as part of their civic
responsibility.
He said such taxes went a long way to support government’s development agenda
by financing re-current expenditure such as the payment of personal emoluments
of public/civil sector employees, financing capital expenditure, including
roads, financing social intervention projects such as the Free Senior High
School programme, and making statutory payments to institutions such as GETFund.
However, he said, only about 20 per cent of eligible taxpayers paid income tax,
and research findings had attributed that to low taxpayer knowledge among
Ghanaians.
He said the GRA was unable to reach everybody in the country with regard to tax
education, recognising that an opportunity in leveraging on religious actors
and their platforms to carry the message on taxation far was important.
Study
The GIZ-Governance for Inclusive Development Program (GovID) is supporting the
government to increase domestic revenues, public financial management and
accountability.
Consequently, in partnership with the Ministry of Finance, tax policies were
developed, and existing ones revised in collaboration with the GRA to make
revenue administration more effective.
In recognition of the potential that a cooperation with faith-based
organisations (FBOs) could help to reach out to potential taxpayers, a baseline
study was conducted by GovID-GIZ to try to understand how religious and
traditional leaders could be included to support the mobilisation of domestic
revenues in Ghana.
The Programme Manager of the GovID-GIZ Ghana, Raphael Frerking, said the role
of religious actors came out very strongly in that baseline study.
“We found that the trust many citizens place in them makes them interesting
stakeholders to increase tax compliance in emphasizing the linkages between tax
payments, accountability and good governance,” he said.
He added that within a short period, some key milestones had been achieved,
including the setting up a National Steering Committee and establishing the
inter-faith dialogue platforms in three pilot regions — Accra, Kumasi and
Tamale.
“All of them have been trained and could increase their knowledge in taxes and
accountability. Going forward, we would like to discuss how to go beyond this
pilot regions and engage other religious leaders in the other regions,” he
said.
Source: graphic.com.gh