There won’t be nuisance taxes but there will be some taxes in the 2022 budget – John Kumah
Deputy Finance Minister John Kumah has supported the government’s bid to tighten its revenue mobilization measures through the introduction of new taxes in the 2022 budget.
He indicated that government really needs to close its fiscal deficit gap and has called on businesses to lower their expectations for the reduction of taxes and removal of levies.
According to him the demand for public service taxes will be introduced by the government to boost cash flows for its various development projects.
“Obviously, if people are expecting the government to spend on their needs, they should be expecting the government to raise revenue for that expenditure, so obviously there will be some progressive measures to ensure that, that revenue is raised”, he stated.
Mr Kumah also indicated the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted negatively on the global economy, hence developing countries such as Ghana need to strategize to bring their economies back on track.
“Covid-19 has really brought changes to the economic paradigm of the world, and any strategic budget must factor into the past Covid-19 interventions that we need to do to revive the economy. But there will be a lot of good news. We will signal clearly that government has to do a lot of fiscal consolidation for government to come back to the fiscal responsibility threshold of 5 per cent by 2024 or before.”
“There is an already general difficult climate globally, because of Covid-19 and so the government is aware of this, so even though we seek to bring measures, it will be one that will not bring too much on people, but rather seeing to expand the economy and increase productivity”, the Minister added.
Ahead of the reading of the budget, the government has been urged not to introduce new taxes in the budget but the lawmaker explains that any taxes introduced will benefit the business community rather.
“We still believe that nuisance taxes are a lazy approach to raise revenue, so we have scrapped a number of them. But every tax we have introduced is aimed at production and how we can make productivity grow. We are still going to maintain that focus, but I can assure you that, there will not be any nuisance taxes.”
By: Stella Annan | myactiveonline.com Twitter @activetvgh
