Collection of rent tax is a major challenge to Internal Revenue Service

Koforidua, May 22, GNA - Barimah Agyenim-Boateng, Deputy Commissioner in charge of Finance, Internal Revenue Service (IRS), on Friday said a major problem facing the service was the collection of rent tax from landlords and landladies. He said the Rent Tax had been in the tax laws for the past 36 years but what had accrued from it was nothing to write home about. Barimah Agyenim-Boateng therefore appealed to property owners to honour their tax obligations regularly to avoid being prosecuted. He made the remarks at a day's seminar on rent tax for landlord and landladies in Koforidua.

Barimah Agyenim- Boateng urged property owners to declare all property and rent income promptly to the IRS, to enable the government to generate the expected revenue to execute more developments projects. He said the service was more determined to implement the rent tax law to its fullest extent and therefore appealed to property owners and tenants to cooperate with them.

Barimah Agyenim- Boateng later in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) commended orthodox churches in the country for honoring their tax obligations regularly. He said the service had no problem with the orthodox churches in terms of payment of taxes, but expressed concern about the attitude of some Pentecostal and Charismatic churches towards their tax obligations. The Deputy Tax Commissioner therefore called on leadership of those churches to emulate the orthodox churches and honour their tax obligations regularly to enable the country mobilizes more revenue for development.

Barimah Agyenim-Boateng said it was unfortunate that there were many churches in the country which were being managed by one person or just a few people without offering any social responsibility to the entire society. He said such churches would be compelled to pay taxes to the government because unlike the orthodox churches which pay taxes for all their employees, the "one man" churches did not pay anything to IRS. Ms Patience Quaye, Eastern Regional Director of the IRS, said for the past three years they had exceeded their revenue targets in the Region and attributed it to a lot of sensitization programmes organized for the people on the need for them to pay taxes to the government. Ms Quaye said the seminar would be extended to all the districts in the Region soon. 22 May 09