The New Patriotic Party’s running mate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has reiterated his party’s resolve to repeal what he describes as “nuisance” taxes.
Dr. Bawumia has for sometime now waged a campaign against some taxes introduced by the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC).
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Friday, Dr. Bawumia said scrapping some of the taxes will be a non-negotiable move under a Nana Akufo-Addo government.
Capital gains too high
“Under a Nana Akufo-Addo government, you are going to see us put together the most business and people friendly economy on this continent. It’s very clear and we’ve been very consistent on what we want to do and some of the taxes that we say will come down. Corporate taxes we want to bring down for sure. The capital gains taxes are too high, the tax on financial services doesn’t make sense, the tax on bringing solar panels to Ghana doesn’t make sense when we want to solve an energy problem. We are going to take away what we call some of these nuisance taxes.”
We’ll reduce rates of some taxes
He further clarified that they will reduce the rates on some of the taxes while “for some we are going to repeal all together.”
Dr. Bawumia listed some of the taxes that will be repealed by an NPP government saying “the VAT on financial services has to go, there is no reason why we should be taxing import duty on solar panels for example and raw material for production. We will take them out as far as import duty is concerned to give the private sector more incentives to produce. So we have a different philosophical approach to these taxes.”
The NDC government led by President John Dramani Mahama has been criticized for introducing “killer taxes” in the country.
Developed countries scrap taxes
According to the NPP running mate, developed countries had to scrap a number of taxes to enable the private sector to turn their economies around for the better.
“If you look at history and look at the main countries that have industrialized, to the 1400 in England, 1700 in the United States and Germany, England, these are the sort of incentives they used to progress.”
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