By Hajaratu Kalokoh
The opposition National Grand Coalition (NGC) Party has said the National Revenue Authority (NRA) is unfriendly to businesses through its tax regime which they say has intensified the economic hardship in the country. The party made the statement at their monthly press conference at their headquarters in Freetown.
NGC uses its monthly press conference to highlight the challenges Sierra Leoneans are going through. The last two conferences have been focused on the state of the economy under President Julius Maada Bio’s administration.
Chairman of NGC, Dr. Dennis Bright said: “One common thread in our interview with the business people is that the NRA is not business friendly; they do not encourage businesses to thrive and then comply. They simply threaten to shut them down. Even those businesses that are suffering today because they have not been paid by government are being chased by the NRA for backlog payments. Taxation is a heavy burden on businesses in Sierra Leone.”
Last month, the Minister of Finance, Jacob Jusu Saffa during the reading of the 2020 budget said the NRA exceeded its revenue collection target. He noted that total revenue collected between January and September 2019, amounted to Le 4.1 trillion or 10.8 percent of GDP.
“This exceeded the target for the first three quarters of the year by Le278 billion,” he stated, adding that Income tax amounted to Le1.42 trillion; Goods and Services Tax (GST) Le756.2 billion and Import Duties Le529 billion.
NGC said this success comes at a huge cost for businesses. Dr Bright said “Good performance by NRA means that the ordinary business persons are kept on their toes and have to pay all the various taxes which, for an importer, would include customs duty, income tax, goods and services taxes, municipal tax, ECOWAS tax and (for employers) NASSIT dues."
The NGC leader later told Politico: “The businesspeople believe that NRA should begin to make concessions, to give them space to grow. But their own feeling is that NRA want to meet their targets by all means and therefore NRA has no pity on them.”
Commissioner of Domestic Tax Department at the NRA, Ibrahim Sorie Kamara, explained to Politico in an interview that businesspeople had a responsibility and NRA was just making sure they enforce compliance.
"Businesspeople have an obligation… They have the obligation to record their activity and pay their tax. And most of them are agents of NRA. They collect money on our behalf and then relate it to NRA," he said.
He added: "The law has never changed, we have not enacted any new law, we have not imposed any tax. (It is) because we are monitoring them closely, the money they use to keep one to two years has now been collected accordingly."
Kamara said he has heard complaints about how GST prices are affecting the cost of business. He said businesses could not be affected by GST because consumers always paid the bill for GST.
"GST is being paid by the consumer, people who buy goods and services. So, there is no way GST is increasing the cost of their businesses. Even when you pay GST at the Port as import GST, when you are selling you charge against your output and you claim what you have paid so it doesn’t affect profitability or the capital of the business," he said.
Dr Bright said as a party they would continue to raise concerns over issues that affect the people.
‘’For our part, we in the NGC will continue to play our role as an opposition and legitimate partners in governance. We will defend the cause of the poor and suffering masses by speaking up for them,” Bright said.
Copyright © 2019 Politico Online
