Bawumia launches 'Tax and Good Governance' week

The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has launched the National Tax and Good Governance week on the theme, “Filing your tax returns your civic responsibility”.

The Tax week which is an initiative of the Ministry of Finance and the Ghana Revenue Authority is to sensitize Ghanaians on the need to pay and their taxes.

Speaking at the ceremony, the Vice President said the initiative is in line with the Akufo-Addo led government’s development policies, particularly the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda.

“This particular program is special because it demonstrate yet another step in our role to fulfilling the vision of the president in the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda,” he said.

According to him, the launch of the National Tax week is an invitation to all Ghanaians to be part of the vision of building a self-financing and sustainable economy and nation.

He said, taxation all over the world is the main tool relied on to mobilize revenue to develop the economies and to provide services for citizens.

“Whatever the advance countries send to us as aid is a result of their own ability to mobilize domestic resource adding that as the country embarks on the journey of Ghana Beyond Aid. It is imperative for us to take rigorous and decisive steps to raise enough income tax,” he stressed.

Dr. Bawumia observed that many economies in sub-Saharan Africa depend largely on import tax, which he said severally distort their allocation of resources and result in fragile and narrow tax bases.

“This is the time that we have to join forces and align our thinking with this paradigm of raising domestic tax revenue, the filing of income tax returns is as much our constitutional obligation,” he posited.

He further explained that revenue mobilization over the years has not kept pace with the ever growing demands of citizens for development project saying, “There are 6 million people identified in active service and out of that number only 1.5 million are registered with the GRA and file their taxes”.