Some 6000 lawyers in the country are not filing their income tax, Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta has revealed. He also disclosed that several doctors and over 60,000 business people have been evading tax, per an exercise conducted by the Ghana Revenue Authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Minister called on Ghanaians to stop bashing the government over the country\u2019s current state due to the fact several professionals are not even paying their taxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Ofori Atta said \u201cso, once upon a time, we had 5.5 million Tax Identification Numbers\u2026 which most of us try to dodge\u2026now today, because of the National ID, GRA has 15.5 million TINs. Now that\u2019s triple.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an interview with Asaase Radio, the Finance Minister added \u201cand then we went through the exercise to sort of titrate to see what we\u2019ve got, and we got about 60,000 businesspeople who were not paying taxes\u2026some 5,000 or 6,000 lawyers are not. Some doctors [are not paying income tax]\u2026so you begin to see all of these professionals, all of us on social media ranting against the government and [realise] that most of these people are not even paying taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo if you look at the multiplier effect of that\u2026we are currently at about 14% of revenue-to-GDP ratio and our peers are 18% to 21%,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the GRA\u2019s revenue target, he indicated \u201cif GRA is telling us that we are targeting GHC57 billion for this year, it means that if you have half of that \u2013 let\u2019s say GHC30 billion \u2013 another GHC30 billion is sitting there somewhere in the wings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNow that\u2019s an enormous amount of resources that we can tap into, to be able to fund development projects. And that\u2019s what gives me the excitement and hope that we can really fund this development [agenda]. The exciting thing, after four years of the administration and being given the mandate for another four years, is that a lot of learning has occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He added \u201cusually when we talk about compliance people are quite cynical about that: can GRA step up their game and do much better? So, structurally, we are changing. And thanks to the vice-president\u2019s push on digitization, we are getting there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Source: Ghana\/Starrfm.com.gh<\/p>\n\n\n\n