Tax man urges employees to prevail on employers to process forms

Ho, May 27, GNA - Mr Kwame Boakye-Yiadom, Chief Inspector of Taxes of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), has appealed to employees to prevail on their employers to process and forward tax relief forms to the IRS to be granted personal relief upfront. He said the relief, if granted, allowed for rebates for purposes of being married, disabled and for child education fed into a recipients pay computation to reduce tax deductions.

Mr Boakye-Yiadom was delivering a paper on Income Tax Laws in Ghana at a seminar for leaders of religious bodies in the Volta Region on Tuesday.

He said tax relief was not given automatically and that the tax payer must fill in forms which would be taken through a process of verification before it is granted.

The series of seminars being organized by the IRS in collaboration with the VAT Service is aimed at raising awareness of religious leaders on tax issues, their obligations and also exhort them to propagate voluntary tax compliance among their flock.

Mr Boakye-Yiadom said while religious bodies are exempted from some taxes they are obliged to pay taxes on other ancillary businesses they engaged in and personal incomes of their employees. Mr Francis Akoto, a Chief Inspector of Taxes at the IRS, said where churches rented a house for their pastor, the law expects that eight percent of rent is withheld as tax to be paid to the IRS. He said it is only ecclesiastic business that is exempted and that collections on "Pastors Appreciation Days" are liable to tax. Mr Akoto said besides paying taxes on gifts, sales of holy soaps, anointing oils and books by religious bodies, among others, also attracted taxes.

Mr Nii Ayi Aryeetey, Assistant Commissioner, Research and Monitoring of the VAT Service, said VAT was a non-discriminatory tax that nobody could dodge since that tax was built into the cost of goods and services.

He said wilful collusion with service providers to dodge VAT could only mean reduced money for GETFund, for example, which would translate into reduced infrastructure.

Mr Kwasi Oppong-Damoah, Volta Regional Director of the IRS, said low tax returns would mean the nation would have to go looking for budget support cash from multilateral bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with its stringent pre-conditions.