Billions Lost Through Tax Evasion

The Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) in collaboration with the Ghana Tax Justice Coalition has held a stakeholders forum seeking to end tax haven secrecy, in Accra today. The forum was anchored on the theme: �End Tax Haven Secrecy�. The call for an end to tax haven secrecy is an initiative to help emerging economies like Ghana become domestic revenue sufficient and efficient pro-poor and progressive. Addressing participants at the forum, the Policy Analyst of ISODEC, Mr Bernard Anaba, explained that tax evasion by multinational company�s costs emerging economies huge sums of revenue running into over 100 billion dollars every year; which is more than the entire global aid budget. He further suggested that G20 leaders introduce measures to end the tax haven secrecy that allows companies to hide their profits and avoid paying taxes in emerging economies. According to him, without firm commitments from them, millions of children will be denied access to basic education and the general poverty in emerging economies will worsen. He demanded that organisations should be made to declare their profits and taxes paid within countries they operate. Adding that there should be automatic exchange of information between different tax jurisdictions, which will help developing countries collect the taxes due them. He called on Ghanaians to act now and challenge the financial injustice by agreeing on the measures to stop tax haven secrecy around the world. In his presentation, a Tax Consultant of Nakyea and Adebiyi,Abdallah Ali�Nakyea, indicated that major challenges confront most developing countries today, and that Ghana is no exception. He noted that reversing the negative trend can help the country mobilise adequate domestic tax revenue to finance their national developmental projects such as the provision of health, education, water, and sanitation to the citizenry. He noted that the low domestic tax mobilisation among poor countries is largely due to elaborate tax evasion and avoidance schemes, such as trade mispricing, that mostly multinational concerns employ to evade national tax authorities.