NPP Flagbearer for the 2024 elections, Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has promised to introduce a very simple, citizen- and business-friendly flat tax regime if elected president in the December elections.
Speaking at his first major public lecture at University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), Dr. Bawumia also said his government will provide tax amnesty to individuals and businesses for a specified period.
“My administration will introduce a very simple, citizen and business friendly flat tax regime. A flat tax of a % of income for individuals and SMEs (which constitute 98% of all businesses in Ghana) with appropriate exemption thresholds set to protect the poor,” he promised.
Dr. Bawmumia said “To start the new tax system on a clean slate, my government will provide a tax amnesty (i.e. a complete exemption from the payment of taxes for a specified period and the waiving of interest and penalties) up to a certain year to individuals and businesses for failures to file taxes in previous years so that everyone will start.”
According to him, with the new tax regime, tax returns, for instance, should be able to be completed in minutes, adding that “We will also simplify our complicated corporate tax system and VAT regime.”
This promises come at a time when the sitting government, in which the Vice President is Chairman of the Economic Management Team, has slapped numerous taxes on Ghanaians due to an IMF bailout, under which it is required to burden Ghanaians with taxes.
The taxes have become reasons for many businesses to fold up, while other are cutting jobs and are engaging in other austerity measures.
Under the same IMF deal, this government has implemented a debt exchange program, which had resulted in a number of haircut to people’s investments including even treasury bills and government bond, which are supposed to be the safest investment instruments in the country.
One of the widely criticized taxes under Dr. Bawumia’s government is the electronic transfer levy (e-levy), on which he remained silent until now that he has promised to abolish it if he becomes president.
Dr. Bawumia has been largely silent on the many taxes his government has burdened Ghanaians with. But now that he is running for president, he has decided to make those thorny issues a matter of campaign promises.
