Honor your tax obligations. It seems like a simple equation: say you will raise taxes to pay for more money for a public policy initiative. The installment of expenses in Ghana and different regions of the planet has been a political hot potato for quite a long time. Our government has started taking steps to stop multinational corporations and other citizens from avoiding taxes.
Yes, the government cannot improve the infrastructure without funding, but people do not want to pay taxes without that infrastructure. In fact, in order for the economy to function properly at even the most fundamental level, governments need to collect funds from their citizens for things like health care, education, transportation, public salaries, and security.
We must all be aware that development is impeded when taxpayers fail to pay their taxes as required by law. The government has frequently voiced its displeasure at having to deal with a lack of resources and the daunting task of collecting money from a population that, in general, is extremely reluctant to do so.
It might be challenging for nations like Ghana which recently discovered oil to collect taxes from individuals and businesses. However, the fact that a significant portion of our economy is informal makes it challenging to tax individuals working in the informal sector, which is the source of many of the issues with the country's insufficient tax burden.
The country has seen a decline in tax revenue as a result of low tax collection, leaving the government with insufficient funds for development. This is due to the fact that provisional fiscal data for the first seven months of the year indicate that total revenue and grants totaled GH20.8 billion, or 10.3% of GDP, as opposed to the target of GH24.0 billion, or 11.33% of GDP. Again, total expenditures and arrears clearance reached GH28.8 billion, or 14.3% of GDP, in contrast to the target of GH32.3 billion, or 16.0% of GDP.
Low import levels, a sluggish non-oil real sector, a slower pace of implementing specific tax measures, and revisions to tax assessments have all hurt revenue performance. The Daily Graphic believes that the government should specify its efforts to improve the integrity of the tax collection process. In our view, the public authority should start to survey a portion of the expense exclusions and discounts conceded to certain associations and evaluate their significance following decreasing duty incomes.
After all, the purpose of taxes is to allow citizens to contribute their fair share to the development of the nation. Therefore, in order to ensure that citizens are well-versed in the complex tax issues and earnings that attract taxes, we recommend that the government launch a comprehensive and ongoing tax education campaign. It is our assumption that when residents become mindful of their obligations to the state, they will actually want to respect their commitments, including charges.
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