Landlords and land­ladies at Asamankese, capi­tal of the West Akyem Municipality of the Eastern Region, have appealed to the Internal Revenue Ser­vice (IRS) to start tax collec­tion on rent from the begin­ning of 2009 instead of it taking retrospective effect. The landlords and land­ladies, who own different types of houses in the munic­ipality, said since they had just been educated on the implementation of the rent tax, the IRS should spare them payment of the tax for the previous years. According to them, that would prevent them from suf­fering from additional finan­cial difficulties since they had already been paying taxes in the form of property rate to the district assembly and the various stool lands in the municipality over the years. The landlords and land­ladies expressed the concern at the fifth "Revenue Week", a period set aside by the IRS for tax education, which was organised by the service at Asamankese at the weekend. The event, which was on the theme, "Enhancing Tax Compliance: The Responsi­bility of the Income Earning Property Owners", was used to educate them on the imple­mentation of the rent tax. The landlords and landladies claimed that most of them were pensioners who survived on the incomes from their houses. They acknowledged that although the tax on rent incomes had been in exis­tence for many years, lack of education on it had made its implementation unknown to them. For that reason, they said any effort by the IRS to plough taxes on past advances paid by tenants to them would worsen their already deplorable financial situation. They maintained that since they had just been educated on the rent tax, the government and the IRS must hesitate to apply the rent tax law to those in the informal sector. Opanin Kwame Oduro, 87, one of the landlords, claimed that although he had collected various sums of rent advances from tenants in the past, part of the money was used to reno­vate his building for the occupants with a portion going to the municipal assembly and the stool lands as property rate. Mr Stephen Yeboah, also a landlord, stated that since landlords and land­ladies had just been made aware of the rent tax, the IRS should start the collec­tion of the tax only from the beginning of this year. Responding to the con­cerns of the landlords and landladies, the Asamankese District Man­ager of the IRS, Mr Lawrence Kusi-Adu, assured them of forwarding their concerns to the authorities for redress. Early on, Mr Kusi-Adu had educated the property owners on rent income and rent tax and appealed to them to comply with the tax law as part of their con­tributions to nation build­ing. Source: Daily Graphic