Members of the Ghana Union Traders Association (GUTA) have lauded the government for taken decision to reform the Value Added Tax (VAT) regime.
Government in the 2025 budget presented by Dr Cassel Ato Forson, Minister of Finance to Parliament on Tuesday March 11, 2025, said it has taken a comprehensive reform on VAT to review the distortions and cascading structure of the regime.
The VAT currently stands at about 22, percent due to additions of about 2.5 percent GETfund levy, NHIL 2.5 percent, and Covid-19 levy 1 percent.
Mr Benjamin Arthur, Director of Welfare of GUTA, told the Ghana News Agency in Kumasi that, the idea by the government to restructure the VAT policy, would be very helpful to business operations in the country.
He said it was important to cut down some of the things which were making the VAT more complex and cumbersome to pay.
Mr Arthur said the business community was patiently waiting to see how the government would go about it.
He lauded the government for providing a seed money for the establishment of the Women Development Bank, and said it was in the right direction since it would provide dedicated financial support to businesswomen and traders.
Mr Arthur also praised the government for keeping its campaign promises of abolishing some taxes, which were affecting business operations in the country and called on the government to keep its promise of cutting down expenditure.
Mr Bismark Osei, an Economic Consultant, stressed the need for the government to set up an independent body to undertake the collection of property rate in the country.
He said the decision by the government to allow the district assemblies to collect the property rate would not yield any positive results since the assemblies had over the years demonstrated their inability to do so.
Mr Osei pointed out that, an independent body would be in a better position to collect and mobilize more resources from property rates to support the government’s revenue mobilization agenda.
He commended the government for not introducing new taxes in the budget and said the reintroduction of the road toll was in the good direction, adding that, the decision by the government to continue all ongoing development projects left by the previous government was also laudable.
