Gov't lied, there is no evidence of software saving Ghana monies from tax evasion – Bright Simons

Social innovator and decorated Ghanaian entrepreneur, Bright Simons has yet again punched holes in figures put out by government.

Mr. Simons, while speaking on the final edition of Newsfile on JoyNews revealed that contrary to earlier assertions by the Communications Ministry that a procured software had been used to uncover monies accrued from tax evasion, the opposite was true.

He intimated that upon examining the trends in the figures put out by the Ghana Revenue Authority over a decade, it was discovered that there was no difference even after the installation of the software.

“…We had a situation where they (government) mentioned a number of important benefits accruing from discovered tax evasion. And then it turns out, that when you actually look at the trajectory of tax revenues, from as far back as 2009, there is no evidence whatsoever that the use of the service of this company has made any difference in the trajectory of those revenues.

Whether you look at it from the point of view of mean and variances or standard deviations or any of those typical approaches that you will use to detect an effect, you don’t find anything,” he told host Samson Anyenini Lardi.

Mr. Simmons described as blatant, government’s continuous stance and effort at justifying their gaffe. He decried the phenomenon as dangerous and noted that it communicated that government was ready to do things with impunity without recourse because they could not be held accountable.

Communications Minister, Ursula Owusu Ekuful revealed that between 2015 and first quarter of 2017, government lost GH?300million in VAT, Communications Service Tax (CST), National Health Insurance Levy (NHIL) and GETFund Levy because telecom operators in the country under-declared their revenues.

“Since the implementation of the Common Monitoring Platform (CMP) we have discovered that GH?300million in taxes was lost to the state due to under-declaration by the telecom operators between 2015 and first quarter of 2017, prior to the implementation of CMP,” she stated.