Progressive tax measures is needed
SEND-Ghana is urging the government to prioritize the completion of the Ghana National Housing Registry (GNHR) by providing the needed resources to the registry secretariat to overcome poverty in the country.
In a media engagement to present the assessment of the 2021 budget and economic statement, the country director of SEND-Ghana George Osei Akoto said the move will ensure effective targeting of extremely poor households for social protection delivery.
“The categorization of the luxury tax will have to take into account those that will have a multiplier effect on the poor. If someone is riding his V8, the poor have no business with it, so we must tax those people for us to use those monies to fund social spending. Other progressive tax measures such as enhancing the efficiency in the collection of property taxation, taxing high network individuals, reducing excessive tax holidays for multinational companies should have been looked at as well, it is just too much to give tax holidays to these people,” he said.
He also called for progressive tax measures including enhancing the efficiency in the collection of property tax by taxing high network individuals and reducing excessive tax holidays for multinational companies to complete another source of revenue generation.
“Our own social audit of the COVID-19 alleviation programme confirms that vulnerable people including street children and homeless people were excluded at the height of the crisis when cooked and uncooked food, in particular, were distributed by the government and other benevolent organization. This was largely due to several factors, including a lack of comprehensive and reliable data on vulnerable population for social protection programming. Prioritizing the completion of the GNHR by providing the needed resources to the secretariat is a sure way to overcome this challenge,” he added.
