By Prince J Musa in Kenema
A Civil Society Consortium on Community Accountability and Service delivery in collaboration with National Revenue Authority (NRA) has engaged traders on the use of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) machines.
In his statement during the engagement on the 8th July, 2024 in Kenema, the Director of the consortium, Williams Sao Lamin said civil society has the responsibility to remind the government of the promises they made to citizens in terms of development and service delivery during the campaign period.
He said one of the things they will continue to remind the government about is to provide economic, cultural and social rights for the citizens which include health facilities, good roads, security, education and an increase of salary for civil servants, among others.
He said that all developments boil down to resources for the government to execute those promises, saying that they will only be achievable through the revenue collected by NRA on behalf of the government to fulfill all those demands from the people.
He stated that one key thing of the engagement has to do with electronic cash machines which NRA has introduced over the years which all big businesses with a capital of 500,000,000 (five hundred million) and above, will have to use.
Sao Lamin noted that during the first tenure of the current government, they promised to introduce free quality education because a lot of children were not fortunate to attend school at that time.
He said it has come to the notice of NRA and civil society that some traders or prominent business people are using the machines but do not issue receipts to buyers or customers buying their goods from their shops. He urged the public to ask for receipts from traders for goods bought since those receipts produced by the electronic device will help both the traders and the government to generate income especially for building materials and electronic devices.
He encouraged the public to learn to pay taxes as the government can only fulfill all their promises when the citizens pay their taxes to be used for national development.
The NRA Public Affairs Manager and Tax Education Officer, Sahr A.K Lamin explained the significant steps NRA has instituted to control taxes, noting that the commission has the most sophisticated system electronically to improve tax collection in the country. He said that the NRA has exceeded its target for this year but that the government needs more monies to enhance development.
He told the public that any business entity that fails to issue receipts to customers should be reported to NRA officers as the commission has an effective and efficient monitoring system and called on all to comply with electronic machines and pay their taxes.
Chairman traders union in Kenema, Alhaji Harding Jalloh commended the civil society and NRA for educating the traders and other people about the importance of asking for receipt to customers as that will help to know the transaction of their goods and profit making as well.
He however raised concerns that traders are faced with some challenges such as wholesalers doing retailing which affects ordinary retail traders.
Copyright © 2024 Politico (10/07/24)
