Senior Lecturer and Economist at the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS) has urged the government to be transparent about how taxes are spent.
According to Dr Agyapomaa Gyeke-Dako, if this is done, citizens will be willing to pay their taxes because they understand the benefits.
She added, “In every country, we have rational human beings. People will not want to pay taxes if nothing is pushing them to pay the tax.”
“So everything about tax payment, for instance, is a matter of changing the mindset of people and people need to understand that to be able to get the benefits that they need to get, the good roads, hospitals etc. we need to be able to mobilise taxes in the country to be able to do that,” she noted.
Dr Gyeke-Dako also entreated Ghanaians not to protest the payment of taxes because it will help with development in the long run.
“We are here fighting against borrowing externally, but we are the same people who also don’t want to be paying taxes, so how will government be able to get some revenue to be able to undertake its obligations in the country?”
In an interview on Newsfile on Saturday, she noted that even in the United Kingdom and the United States and other Western world’s where many people pay taxes, the tax rules are strictly enforced.
For this reason, she demanded that the same tax enforcement measures be implemented nationwide.
“So it is very important that as we ask people to pay property taxes, as we ask people to file their taxes, we back them with some measures to ensure enforcement,” she stated.