Government has hidden Ghc11 billion tax in 2024 budget; we’ll expose it – George Ricketts-Hagan.
George Ricketts-Hagan, the Member of Parliament for Cape Coast South, has claimed that GH¢11 billion in taxes are concealed in the government’s 2024 budget, and the Minority caucus in Parliament would expose it in the coming days.
Ken Ofori-Atta, the Minister of Finance, presented the government’s 2024 budget to Parliament on Wednesday. He also outlined eight tax breaks the government plans to start implementing the following year.
The extension of the zero rate of VAT on locally manufactured African prints for two (2) more years; waiving import duties on the import of electric vehicles for public transportation for 8 years; waiving import duties on semi-knocked down and completely knocked down electric vehicles imported by registered EV assembly companies in Ghana for 8 years, and extending the zero rate of VAT on locally assembled vehicles for 2 more years are some of the reliefs the contained in the budget.
Additionally, Ofori-Atta also announced zero rate VAT on locally produced sanitary pads; granting import duty waivers for raw materials for the local manufacture of sanitary pads; granting exemptions on the importation of agricultural machinery equipment and inputs and medical consumables, raw materials for the pharmaceutical industry, as well as a VAT flat rate of 5 percent to replace the 15 percent standard VAT rate on all commercial properties.
But reacting to the budget in an interview on Eyewitness News on Accra-based Citi FM, Ricketts-Hagan urged Ghanaians not to celebrate the content of the budget because according to him, it has some hurting taxes deliberately hidden in it.
“We know that there’s GH¢11 billion in taxes [in the budget], but it is hidden, so we will unravel it… In a couple of days, we will unwrap it and show where they have been hidden.
“…They have been disguised, and that was the whole idea… So we have to open it up,” he said on Wednesday, November 16, 2023.
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Dr Stephen Amoah, the deputy minister of trades on the other hand, said that the minority and the Cape Coast South MP were looking for nonexistent issues to criticize the government for.
