Member of Parliament for Tamale Central, Murtala Mohammed, has disclosed that the 2022 budget presented by government is riddled with inconsistencies and half-baked truths.
According to him, the NPP’s “justification” for the imposition of the e-levy is that they have to engage in infrastructure development, a move he explained former President Mahama has an “unmatched” delivery of in the country, yet, he didn’t “impose e-levy” on the people.
“If you observed my contribution to the budget on the floor, I called for an absolute rejection of the budget because you have a lot of inconsistencies and half-baked truths in the budget. And if I were to support the approval of this budget, I must as well send the people of this country to their graves”.
Mr Murtala Mohammed
Mr Mohammed revealed that when honourable A. B. Fuseini, MP for Sagnarigu Constituency, was asked what he was expecting from the budget, prior to its reading, he made a “legendary” remark that his expectation is that the people of this country are going to hear “funeral announcement” and he reckons that’s “precisely” what happened.
“What was read by the minister for finance was nothing but funeral announcement of the public sector worker… The only people whose funeral was not announced was the people who live in the flagstaff house”.
Mr Murtala Mohammed
E-levy imposition is regressive
Describing the e-levy as “regressive”, the Tamale Central legislator explained that taxes could be progressive, regressive and proportional. This, he noted, tax experts consent to and as such the tax that doesn’t impose much burden on the poor is progressive tax, whereas proportional tax affects the poor more than it affects the rich.
“As a matter of fact, this tax is regressive. It’s regressive because not much thinking was done into it. In the first place, the telcos were not involved. Isn’t it ironic that you find a commercial entity that taxes people for the purposes they serve and a state which is supposed to be seeking the welfare of the people of this country is even charging more people than the commercial entities whose main objective is to maximize profit and minimize cost?”
Mr Murtala Mohammed
Recounting statements made by some members of the Akufo-Addo administration registering their opposition to imposition of taxes in the past, Mr Mohammed intimated that Vice President Bawumia stated in 2019 that to impose taxes on communication or mobile money was the most “dangerous thing” to do by any government.
Dr Bawumia, he revealed, stated elsewhere that “taxation was a lazy man’s approach to develop the country”.
“Another infamous [one] which was made by the current minister for communication, that if you have to develop the country through taxation, then her seventeen year old could rule Ghana. So, clearly, this is an unprincipled position that the NPP is taking today. Today, we are being told that we are ungrateful, that they want to develop this nation and they want to tax us to develop and we are crying”.
Mr Murtala Mohammed
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