A Senior lecturer at the University of Cape Coast, Dr Seyram Kawor has raised concerns about the impact of the introduction of new tax measures on businesses and individuals.
According to him, although the government intends to generate more revenue to develop the nation, citizens will be at the receiving end if the wrong tax measures are introduced.
This, he said could potentially collapse many businesses.
“The larger tariff as we have seen as announced in the budget statement last November may bring some form of hardship to the business community, the individual as a whole. Government would be able to make some revenue but at the end of the day, the citizens would be at the receiving end,” he said.
Speaking on interview on January 1, he explained that already the many people were skeptical about paying taxes since the government often failed to render proper account of projects undertaking with taxes.
Also, he said the introduction of the taxes will further increase the cost of living in the country as consumer will be forced to pay more for the same products.
“As you have the industry players saying when the taxes are implemented, government is going to make in more revenue but the businessmen and women are going to push this taxes to the final consumers and that would raise the prices of items we have in the market”
Again, Dr. Kawor advised since more people where in the informal sector, government can adopt digital platforms to collect taxes from them and increase its revenue generations.
Although, he lauded the government for finding innovative way to broaden the tax generation net by introducing electronic levy, he mentioned that many individuals might resort to solely using cash in their transactions implying that they have evaded taxes.
To address this, he suggested that the government considers reducing the current 1.5 e-levy rate.
“In that case people would pay the money without feeling it and that would be a good way to go but as we speak if we do not do that then there would also be avenues where people can avoid tax and that avoidance is not a crime and so we need to have a second look at the e-levy so that we can bring in a lot more people rather than taxing, the few things that we have. Even if you look at the taxes that are being given in terms of the taxes on sanitary pad.
“We also have to find out whether, when that is implemented it is going to reflect in the prices of the items that they produce on the market not a situation where the producers or manufacturers will now come and tell us that the exchange rate is affecting, the fuel price is affecting and for that matter they cannot be able to reduce the prices they have on the market”.