Parliament’s Finance Committee to prioritise work on tax exemptions bill

Finance Committee of Parliament has commenced the process of consideration of the Tax Exemptions Bill 2021.

This follows the referral of the important bill to the committee by the Speaker of Parliament after it was laid in Parliament on the 16^th of November 2021.

According to Citi News sources, the bill will be given utmost attention by the committee owing to the need for government to urgently put in place measures to block revenue leakages.

The bill, which seeks to streamline the tax exemption regime in the country, was first laid on the floor of Parliament in 2019, but was not passed before the tenure of the 7th Parliament elapsed on 7th January 2021.

In August 2021, a group of civil society organisations; Tax Justice Coalition, Ghana (TJC), the Parliamentary Network Africa (PNAfrica), and the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition Ghana (GACC), under the umbrella of the Legislative Advocacy Programme with funding from OXFAM rekindled efforts to ensure that the right tax exemptions regime is instituted in the country.

Following, the first reading and presentation of the bill, the parliamentary process requires that the Finance Committee considers it and reports to the plenary before the second reading stage where the policy and principles of the bill are debated.

As part of the process of consideration, the finance committee is expected to take memoranda from the public.

The bill was accompanied by a memorandum issued under the hand of the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta.

It has 34 clauses that spell out the remit of the legal regime, the bill proposes.