Collection of
rent tax is a major challenge to Internal Revenue Service
Koforidua, May 22,
Ghanadot/GNA - Barimah Agyenim-Boateng, Deputy
Commissioner in charge of Finance, Internal Revenue Service
(IRS), on
Friday said a major problem facing the service was the
collection of
rent tax from landlords and landladies.
He said the Rent Tax had been in the tax laws for the past
36
years but what had accrued from it was nothing to write home
about.
Barimah Agyenim-Boateng therefore appealed to property
owners to
honour their tax obligations regularly to avoid being
prosecuted.
He made the remarks at a day's seminar on rent tax for
landlord
and landladies in Koforidua.
Barimah Agyenim- Boateng urged property owners to declare
all
property and rent income promptly to the IRS, to enable the
government to generate the
expected revenue to execute more developments
projects.
He said the service was more determined to implement the
rent tax
law to its fullest extent and therefore appealed to property
owners
and tenants to cooperate with them.
Barimah Agyenim- Boateng later in an interview with the
Ghana
News Agency (GNA) commended orthodox churches in the country
for
honoring their tax obligations regularly.
He said the service had no problem with the orthodox
churches in
terms of payment of taxes, but expressed concern about the
attitude of some Pentecostal and
Charismatic churches towards their tax
obligations.
The Deputy Tax Commissioner therefore called on leadership
of
those churches to emulate the orthodox churches and honour
their taxobligations regularly to enable the country
mobilizes more revenue for
development.
Barimah Agyenim-Boateng said it was unfortunate that there
were
many churches in the country which were being managed by one
person or just a few people
without offering any social responsibility to the
entire society.
He said such churches would be compelled to pay taxes to the
government because unlike the orthodox churches which pay
taxes for
all their employees, the "one man" churches did not pay
anything to
IRS.
Ms Patience Quaye, Eastern Regional Director of the IRS,
said for
the past three years they had exceeded their revenue targets
in the
Region and attributed it to a lot of sensitization
programmes
organized for the people on the need for them to pay taxes
to the
government.
Ms Quaye said the seminar would be extended to all the
districts
in the Region soon.
GNA
