The President of the Ghana Bar Association Tony Forson has described as “patently false” claims by Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta that some six thousand lawyers in the country do not pay their taxes.
According to Mr Forson, the number of lawyers in the country are just in excess of 3,000 so there is no basis for the comment.
“Unfortunately, a statement was made by the minister of finance that over 6,000 lawyers don’t pay tax. That’s very unfortunate because there was no basis for that.”
“Absolutely false, first of all, we don’t have 6,000 lawyers in Ghana, It’s likely in excess of 3,000, so the data is wrong. There are so many lawyers who are in government service who pay tax directly, so the statement is just patently false,” Mr Forson told Francis Abban on the Morning Starr Thursday.
He added: “there are people in private practice who also pay taxes, so the impression given that lawyers don’t pay tax is really unfortunate. But I believe that whoever gave him the information misled him.”
Mr Ofori Atta in August told Accra-based Asaase Radio that “we got about 60,000 businesspeople who were not paying taxes, some 5,000 or 6,000 lawyers are not. Some doctors [are not paying income tax]…so you begin to see all of these professionals, all of us on social media ranting against the government and [realise] that most of these people are not even paying taxes.”
Source: Starrfm.com.gh