Business News of Saturday, 14 October 2023
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
‘Don't scrap COVID-19 levy’ – Tax expert cautions government
Dr. Abdallah Ali-Nakyea, a tax expert and consultant
Abdallah Ali-Nakyea, a tax expert and consultant has advised the government against all attempts to end the collection of COVID-19 levy although the disease is no longer a global threat.
According to him, scrapping off taxes without an alternate source of revenue generation would eventually lead to the introduction of more taxes thus increasing the financial burden on citizens.
“I have always held that it is not a tax I wish should be scrapped, reason is that remember when the government came into power, we all celebrated the scrapping of 16 tax types, today imagine the number of taxes coming back, so it shows it wasn’t the right approach in the first place,” he explained while speaking at the just ended Vodafone Business Runway in Accra.
To end concerns raised by Ghanaians on why they continue to pay COVID-19 levy, Ali-Nakyea proposed a change in the name of the levy to help cater for challenges in the health sector.
“We could have scrapped two, the following year two, gradually and so we would have been able to find other means. The reason I am saying this is that supposing we scrap COVID-19 Levy, today the challenges Korle Bu Teaching Hospital is having with dialysis, are we going to introduce dialysis levy?” he said.
He added, “So, I think the name given to it might have been the cause of the problem, we really have a lot of problems in the health sector, any revenue should be channeled to solve them.”
The 1% levy was introduced by the government during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana to provide financial support in combating the virus and its effects.
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