Deputy Finance Minister, Dr. John Kumah, has revealed that 70% of revenues collected from property tax will go to district assemblies in the country.
According to him, the government’s push for the property tax rate is due to the introduction of technology in the collection of property taxes. He indicated that while property taxes are not new to Ghana, they have not been the best and as a result, failed to yield needed revenue for government.
“Of course, 70% of all the revenues from that property tax will go to the District Assemblies and then the rest will go to GRA and part to Central Government. So, definitely, we’re very confident that this time it will be different because of the arrangements we have done and the background research and studies that have been done in terms of identification and proper evaluation of the properties.”
Dr John Kumah
Dr Kumah indicated that with the introduction of new technology to solve the issues within the property tax rate regime, revenue from the sector will experience a significant increment. He iterated that “now government is introducing technology in the collection” of the property tax rate and with the support of the Ghana Revenue Authority and the private sector, they are working with the various district assemblies in Ghana.
“The Ghana Statistical Service has already done the census and identified about 8.5million houses across the country; so now we know the number of houses. We needed the technology that could assist us to do proper location and identification of these houses and then the evaluation, the assessment of the cost, because if you haven’t done the evaluation of the property, how do you charge it?”
Dr John Kumah
Stakeholders support to implement tax regime
The Deputy finance minister stated that coupled with support from the Ministry of Local Government, all the grounds work has been done and government strongly believes that because of the technology that will assist in the identification and delivery of the property tax rate, it will see high increment and enforcement of the rate.
“So, it’s taken a while, but at least in 2023 we’re going to begin to see results with the property tax rate.”
Dr John Kumah
Dr Kumah expressed that the government is very confident the introduction of the revamped property tax rate will be a significant addition to the government’s aggressive revenue mobilization toolkit.
Meanwhile, the deputy finance minister has called on Ghanaians to support the government’s revenue mobilization measures as outlined in the 2023 Budget.
According to him, government’s increment of the Value Added Tax (VAT) by 2.5% even though will lead to an increase in commodity price, is a good measure to alleviate the country’s economic downturn.
Dr. John Kumah conceded that any increment of tax will reflect on commodity prices among others. However, in the current circumstances Ghana finds itself in, he expressed that there is the need for “burden sharing attitude from everybody” in the country to be able to walk out of the economic hardship and global economic crunch which has impacted the country.
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