Businesses have once again laid bare their frustrations to government over the administration of taxes in the country. At a PriceWaterhouseCoopers-organised pre-budget forum in Accra last week, the businesses - made up of mostly private companies - said the administration of withholding tax and tax refunds have been poorly managed to the extent that the tax systems are now impeding business growth and capital acquisition. They explained that the withholding tax system was crippling their ability to plough back their investment income to further inject capital into their businesses and called for some exemptions to be made for the good of the economy. In addition, the inability of the tax authorities to develop a system to ensure the prompt payment of tax refunds was largely blamed for locking up the capital needed for reinvestment in businesses. They have therefore appealed to government to streamline the administration of withholding tax in order to minimise delays. The Director of Tax Services at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Darcy White, said the company has made an appeal for Large Taxpayers Unit (LTU) taxpayers to be exempted from withholding tax because the companies are made to do self-assessment and the withholding tax regime was meant to be in installments and create a way to collect money prior to filing of tax returns. "Since the large taxpayers are already making their self-assessment and paying installments based on this, and they have been shown to show a good track record within the business community and Ghana, we should just make them work on their self-assessment and not pay withholding tax. "But we think the key issue is that there is need for a clearer regulations on tax administration; there must be practitioners note, commissioners ruling, and there must be much more publication of some of the court cases that have been arrived at - and all of these would allow an easier way for tax authorities and taxpayers to know taxes and how they are applied and how they will be calculated," he added. He said the concerns raised by the business community would be included as inputs into the preparation of the 2009 national budget by the end of this month. The PriceWaterhouseCoopers pre-budget forum has been held over the years to collate expectations of the business and investor communities for submission to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning as inputs into the annual national budget planning process. While some of the inputs have in the past been accepted, they have largely ignored most of the budgetary inputs made by the business community. But the Country Leader of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Charles Egan, explained that the business community does not expect government to accept all its inputs into the budget and are happy once some of their concerns are heeded by the state authorities. He was confident that some of the issues raised will be included as inputs into the next budget preparation. He mentioned some successes of the pre-budget forum, like the reduction of withholding tax to five percent in the 2008 budget while corporate tax has been reduced from 29 percent to 25 percent. Source: B&FT