All tax exemptions are not automatically good or bad - Oppong-Nkrumah

The Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, has said it is right for tax exemptions to be questioned since it is not cast in stone that every tax exemption is good or bad.

He said this at the back of an earlier notice served by the minority in Parliament that they would resist an attempt by the government to give tax exemptions to some 45 companies presented to Parliament as One-District-One-Factory companies and Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) strategic investors.

He said as quoted by 3news.com, “That is why you have to determine whether every request for tax exemption is worth it or not. It is not a blanket rule that all tax exemptions are bad or all tax exemptions are good. I think it is legitimate that our colleagues raised questions that we want to examine the request for exemptions that are yet to be considered by the committee.”

Oppong-Nkrumah also noted that the government is aware that not all tax exemptions are justified.

“The government has already pushed the Exemptions Bill because we are clear not all tax exemptions are justified but like every other jurisdiction, we are also clear that some exemptions are justified.

Fancy a scenario where we need to build an interchange in Takoradi, the PTC Interchange, a few hundreds of millions of dollars which we don't have and therefore we are borrowing from creditors to construct that PTC Interchange which would help our brothers and sisters in the Western Corridors a lot,” he explained.

The Minister added that “The question is, should you impose a tax on that list of items in the credit facility? Because if you do that Four Hundred Million Dollar project may end up Four Hundred and Sixty Million Dollars because of the taxes and you will have to come and ask the Ghanaian taxpayer to pay Four Hundred and Sixty Million Dollars instead of Four Hundred Million Dollars, that is the decision you have to make.”

SSD/MA

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