President of the Institute of Chartered Accountant Ghana (ICAG), Professor Williams Atuilik, has admonished members of the institute on the need to fulfil all tax obligations due them.
According to him, President Akufo-Addo has taken steps to address the issue by urging defaulting lawyers, accountants and other professional to remain consistent in the payment of taxes.
Speaking on the theme, “Using digitization to broaden the tax net”, Prof Atruilik expressed the need for accountants to help government rake in more revenue for the country.
He made this revelation at the 2021 Annual Presidential Luncheon at the Institute of Chartered Accountant Ghana.
“Quite recently, we all heard the President of the republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, admonishing professionals to turn away from avoiding their tax obligations as has been discovered by the GRA. Unfortunately for me, both examples he used are… the legal and accountancy professions. Therefore, I took a double dose of the admonishment of the President. Dear colleagues, professionals [and] accountants, permit me to take the liberty to add to the admonishing of His Excellency, the President of the republic, by asking all of us to do the needful; to be tax complaint.
“This is an imperative. Whiles using tax planning schemes to minimize the amount of tax to pay is not unlawful, the accounting profession should support government to maximize tax revenue”.
Professor Williams Atuilik
Broadening the tax net
On his part, tax expert, Dr Ali Nakyea, revealed that digitization of tax payment will mitigate non tax compliance issues and broaden the tax net.
According to him, some of the challenges the country faces in tax mobilization is unemployment and corruption. He thenconcerted to the assertion that the notion that some accountants are evading taxes are partially true.
“We need to adopt digital platforms, very necessary. In that way, we are able to reduce the kind of barriers that exists in tax compliance. We can also use data-centric approaches in dealing with any compliance problems that taxpayers may have. We can also with the digitization deal with the taxation of the digital economy because we can use interface with the digital service providers and be able to track their revenues. I’m sure we are all aware the savings that the past President… has been able to give the government through its fuel tracking system. These are all some of the ways we can broaden the tax system”.
Dr Ali Nakyea
Meanwhile, speaking on behalf of the Vice President, Dr Bawumia, the minister for National Security, Albert Kan Dapaah, stated that broadening the tax net will make government achieve its revenue target.
“Digitization is essential; essential for growth and essential for development. Technology has more far-reaching benefits than the manual systems that we operated prior to the global outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020”.
Mr Albert Kan Dapaah
Government has in the past year, sought to resolve challenges confronting the collection of taxes from Ghanaians. However, in November 2020, the Ghana Revenue Authority assured that its digitisation and automation systems are being implemented, and that the challenges associated with filing for tax reliefs would be resolved.
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