An Economist at the Natural Resources Governance Insitute, Dr Alex Ampanbeng has expressed concern that new taxes will overburden taxpayers and harm industries.
This comes at the back of the passage of the GRA Bill 2022, and the Income Tax Amendment Bill 2022 which are designed to hasten board approval for the 3 billion International Monetary Fund Program.
He urged the government to focus on blocking loopholes in the tax collection system and aim at ensuring efficient revenue collection under existing taxes rather than introducing new ones.
According to him, it’s not the number of taxes introduced but the efficiency of tax collection systems.
“It’s about efficiency, it not about the number of taxes you introduce. E-Levy we projected to get 6. 9 billion as of November that is the last data, I have, we have only generated 3.8 million that’s about 5.7 per cent which is less than the target.”
Dr Ampabeng called on the government to withdraw the E-levy, and do proper consultations and also attributed the failure in the implementation of the E-Levy to the government’s lack of stakeholder consultation.
