When tax incentives robs the education budget --who suffers?
Estimate—Ghana loses about $1.2 billion through tax incentives and tax holidays incentives each year and this is stated as a conservative estimate, according to ActionAid-Ghana. Fact—that amount is more than a thousand times the entire budget allocation for the free Senior High School (SHS) programme this year and almost three times more than the entire budget for education in the 2017 budget. According to experts, the country’s trade policy and development agenda have over the years been dictated by the desire to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and to increase export earnings. Tax incentives have ,therefore, been a major strategic tool to achieve these goals. However, this strategy defers the payment of corporate taxes. It gives companies, mostly multinationals time limits typically between five to 15 years from the start of their operations in Ghana where they are exempted from paying taxes. Trade offs In the view of experts on t...