Tax relief for Covid-19 Trust Fund donors won’t affect Gov’t revenue – Tax Analyst      

Tax Analyst William Demetia, says granting tax reliefs to companies that have donated towards the National Covid -19 Trust Fund, will not in any way affect government’s revenue target for the year.

The GRA says the policy will also affect companies that are yet to make a donation.

So far, some Trust Fund has received GHS50 million in donations from individuals and organisations.

Some have questioned the rationale behind the idea, considering that government will not be able to meet its revenue target for the year due to the pandemic.

But the Tax Analyst, William Demetia, told Citi Business News government at this stage is more focused on building the economy, and this could just be one of the ways to achieve that.

“I think the Minister of Finance in his speech to Parliament made it very clear that government will not achieve its revenue target for the year. If you look at the estimate of things we are losing over the period, government is estimated to be losing billions of Ghana cedis in terms of revenue, and so it is without doubt that government will not achieve its revenue target”.

Mr. Demetia says government must ensure that its assistance goes to the right quarters.

“Tax is not only imposed to raise revenue. There are times tax is imposed to achieve government’s objective. In government, coming out to provide tax reliefs, government is achieving a social objective and not necessarily raising money, but getting individuals to be able to donate towards a course that will save all of us and the greater society. It may not be entirely appropriate to tag it as politically right and economically wrong, but it is supposed to achieve a particular objective and our job is to interrogate whether that objective is good and whether the mechanisms put in place to ensure that, that policy is achieved.”

“ It is a cause that we have to support but as I always insist, we must find out whether the right checks and balances are in place to be able to ensure that the relief gets to the needed or the targeted person. Your first and foremost task is to get the economy running and then you can look at improving your tax deficiency models to be able to rake in the needed revenue.”