World-renowned evangelist and author, Dr. Lawrence Tetteh, has stated that asking churches to pay taxes will result in double taxation.
The founding President of the Worldwide Miracle Outreach who doubles as an economist indicated that it is ignorant people who would want the church to pay taxes.
He was speaking in an Asaase News interview stating that, “…Today very ignorant people wake up and say the church should be taxed; that is an insult. From the economic point of view that is double taxation.
“Remember in the history of the Bible, we had ungodly people ask the church to be taxed. What people lose sight of is that the people you think are very rich you can count them; you live in Ghana, how many pastors use Land Cruisers? If you take the few of us [pastors] that seem to be doing well, we are not more than ten.
“The rest that you don’t see are in pain, and debt, and do not have a place to sleep. In fact, if you go to certain pastors’ homes, you will be very sad for them.”
According to him, “… you cannot tax the church. The church is only being benevolent to society.”
Dr. Tetteh however noted that the church has been instrumental in the development of the country thus should not be demonized to avoid demoralizing people from contributing to its furtherance.
“The gifts that the church receives go back into the church; school fees are being paid [from these]. If you look at Ghana, but for the church, the nation would have been as illiterate as some nations of the sub-region I don’t want to mention…we should applaud the church…”
He added: “When you tax the church what do you gain? If you want to look at it critically, it’s only anti-church people who complain that the church pays tax…”.