The Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications has stated its position on recent allegations that its members may have under-declared taxes to the Ghana Revenue Authority.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Chamber, Ken Ashigbe has told journalists at the Chamber’s end of year media engagement that they were surprised to have heard the Minister of Communication suggest that the telcos had under declared revenue.
“We have not seen any such report – and when it comes to taxes we deal with the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), not the Communications Ministry, so we have written to GRA to provide us a report of the said evidence – we copied the Communications Minister,” he said.
He said telcos are key partners in the implementation of the common platform and so it is surprising that such a sensitive information is allegedly emerging from the platform and telcos are completely in the dark about it.
Ken Ashigbe noted that even though every GHC1 telcos make, 40Gp goes to government in taxes, telcos are very strict on themselves when it comes to paying taxes so the Minister’s claims came as a surprise to them.
“Taxes are not something we take for granted at all so we are not treating this matter lightly because those claims go to the very core of our reputation,” he said.
He noted that contrary to the years of repeated claims that telcos under declare revenue and hide taxes, the industry continues to contribute immensely to government’s tax revenue every year.
Indeed, recently the Chamber released a report indicating in 2018 alone, telcos paid a whopping GHC2.2 billion in taxes, representing some 9 per cent of government total revenue basket.
They noted that out of the total, Communication Service Tax (CST) topped with ¢420 million, followed by Value Added Tax (VAT), ¢413 million; Corporate Income Tax (CIT), ¢343 million; Withholding Tax (WHT), ¢293 million and Import Duties, ¢180 million.
The rest are Surcharge on International Incoming Traffic (SIIT) GH¢155 million; SIIT is the quantum of six cents per every minute of call that comes from overseas into the country.
The Chamber also noted that in 2015, the year the Minister claimed telcos hid taxes, they paid a whopping GHC1.4 billion in taxes, and in 2017, the paid GHC1.74 billion.
They argued that the figures clearly shows that taxes from the industry keeps growing organically.