Accra, July 28, GNA - A survey on the tax culture in Ghana has revealed that the poor attitude to tax payment is due to the lack of transparency in the use of the money.

The report found that tax coverage was low and the reluctance to pay tax was the result of the perceived corruption among public officials who largely relied on tax revenue. A considerable number of citizens are also not fully meeting their tax obligations. Dr Raymond Atugubah of the Legal Resource Centre, who undertook the survey with support from the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), said in Accra on Friday that poor rapport between tax collectors and taxpayers accounted for low tax collection.

He mentioned the cost of litigations, delay in the administration of justice as the main factors hampering the filing of tax claims in the courts saying there was the need for the setting up tax tribunals to deal with disputes.

The report identified high tax burden and low income levels as additional contributing factors to the low revenue collected as tax. Dr Atugubah said effective control mechanisms were only partly available while the tax authority had to a large extent relied on voluntary compliance, which should be deepened by education. He said district assemblies ought to be transparent in the use of the tax they collected and people who misappropriated tax revenues should be punished.

Dr Atugubah said the studies showed that Ghanaians were voluntary tax payers and that could be determined in the manner in which Christians paid their tithes to the churches adding "70 per cent of Christians pay 10 per cent of their income as tithe".

To improve upon the culture of tax in the country there was the need to bridge the gap between traditional rulers and the revenue agencies, educate them on the tax systems and the benefits, he said. By so doing the traditional rulers, ho since pre-colonial era had succeeded in collecting tax from their people, would better explain the good side of the tax collected to their people. They should, however, not engage directly in the collection.

Dr Christoph Habammer, Head, Revenue Mobilization Support, GTZ, said no studies had been conducted on the tax culture and it was generally assumed that Ghanaians were averse to payment of tax. He noted that the project had unearthed the attitude of Ghanaians with regard to tax and expressed the hope that the outcome would be implemented by revenue collection agencies to widen the tax net.