Akwasi Addai Odike, the founder and leader of the United Progressive Party (UPP) has emphatically stated that funeral undertakers in the country must be taxed.
According to him, the approach to tax people even before they make any income only goes to impoverish rather than empower them.
The so-called E-levy proposed by the Minister of Finance in the 2022 Budget Statement aims to rake in some 6.9 billion Ghana Cedis annually and replace the funds that would have been accrued from the collection toll levies on highways, which the ministry estimates to have been raking in only GHC 78 million.
Speaking on Kumasi-based Angel FM, Akwasi Addai Odike said “An undertaker can charge over GHC 10,000 for working on only one corpse on a Saturday and walk away with all the cash without paying any taxes on their incomes; chiefs also sell large tracts of land without paying any taxes but expect their towns to be developed, it is high time the government looked at taxing all those activities,” Odike said.
He challenged the government to ditch the idea of taxing mobile money transactions that would affect the poor and rather look at raking income from informal sources like funerals and land sales by chiefs.
Source: Mybrytfmonline/Joseph Asare
