We don’t collect enough taxes on properties - Kwasi Prempeh

Ghana’s inability to collect taxes woefully disappointing, CDD Director

Calls intensify for collection of property taxes

Appropriate revenue in the country not realized, Prempeh

Executive director of the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh, has stated that Ghana’s inability to collect enough taxes on properties in Ghana is worrying.

He stated that government needs to strike the balance between imposing taxes and actually collecting them.

The CDD boss intimated that even though Ghana has imposed so may taxes on its citizens, successive governments have not been able to successfully mobilized revenue.

He wants the collection of property taxes to be enforced.

Speaking on Accra-based Asaase Radio he said, “I do not disagree that as a country, we need to raise our tax collection. And as a country, we need to make a distinction between imposing a tax and actually collecting it. I think there are a lot of taxes on the books but our capacity to collect the taxes, for me, is actually what is woefully lacking and disappointing.

“…So, on property rates, Accra has gone through this huge construction of real estate boom in commercial buildings, residential buildings, apartments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of dollars in the last 20 or so years."

“…If we were to ask the state to account for how much it collected in property taxes from this huge expansion, a huge construction boom, we will be surprised; not a whole lot. We don’t collect enough taxes,” Prempeh said.

Meanwhile, Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia in a public lecture last year stated that a digital property address system will allow for the country to successfully collect taxes online.

“We lack the key elements to implement and monitor an effective property tax regime. An effective property tax regime requires that we are able to identify all properties, access the value of all properties, identify and maintain a property ready database, send property tax bills to the owners and enforce the payment of taxes”.

He said, “Thanks to the implementation of the National ID, the National Digital Property address system, the mobile money interoperability and the Ghana.gov project, Ghana now has the infrastructure to implement a property tax system.

Bawumia said, “We have finally developed a national common platform for property tax administration for Ghana which will operate across all the MMDAs in Ghana. The platform is ready and is expected to be implemented by the ministry of local government”.