Government, will in the next few weeks, institute a presidential taskforce to clamp down on landlords and property owners, who charge rent in foreign currencies.
“The major rationale behind the taskforce formation is to ensure that landlords and property owners do not overcharge their tenants especially in foreign currencies as the practice is contrary to the rent law," a document cited by Business Day had revealed.
Currently, the various stakeholders in the housing sector including Rent Control are making their final inputs into the document for the formation of the taskforce, whose duty will also include mobilization of rent taxes as part of efforts to improve revenue collection.
The government is hopeful that the new taskforce, when formed, will help the state generate more revenues from landlords and property owners to salvage the ailing economy.
The rent tax currently stands at eight per cent and landlords and property owners are expected to pay this rate to government anytime they lease out their properties.
The newspaper reports that a key stakeholder in the tax force implementation said: "the rent law demands that landlords pay rent taxes to the state but due to poor mechanization and weak revenue mobilisation system on the part of the government and state institutions, the state has to lose huge sums of money from this avenue.”
The source continued: “Currently the country is facing economic hardship due to inadequate donor support. To this effect, the government has now decided to tax everything and the latest to be enforced is rent tax and landlords are the key targets now.”
The Chief Rent Controller, Addo Soin Dombo in an exclusive interview with Business Day confirmed that his outfit had been served with a copy of the proposed documents on the taskforce to enable him make his inputs.
He said issues of rent tax has been in existence for years and that his outfit was the right body to do the collection but lack of personnel and inadequate infrastructures made the Rent Control ineffective.
Posted by EA