Organised labour has called on the government to review the three-year old tax-free threshold of GH¢240 per annum to reduce the burden on workers in the formal sector of the economy. By the prevailing tax-free threshold, only workers who earn less than GH¢240 per annum or GH¢20 per month are exempt from tax and, according to the Trades Union Congress (TUC), that had not changed since it was fixed in 2006, even though salaries had increased during the period. At a media interaction last Friday, the Secretary-General of the TUC, Mr Kofi Asamoah, argued that in that scenario it was the workers in the formal sector who bore the heavy income tax burden and cautioned that the TUC would not allow its members to continue to be treated unfairly, while wealthy people in the so-called informal sector were left off the hook. He said the TUC submitted proposals to the government for the 20100 Budget Statement and Economic Policies to review the tax schedule but was disappointed to observe that attention was not paid to the demand of TUC on taxes on income in the 2010 budget. The secretary-general said the silence of the budget on the TUC demand for a review of income taxes meant that the government intended to continue its over-reliance on taxing the formal sector workers. Mr Asamoah said the TUC had every reason to believe that the government would tax workers more because its revenue projections were based on direct taxes as contained in the 2010 budget. He stressed that the Congress expected to see a significant shift from the situation where formal sector workers had become an easy prey for the tax authorities and served notice that next year the TUC would do whatever it would take to ensure that workers in the formal sector were treated fairly under the single spine structure when it is implemented in the public service. On the oil discovery, Mr Asamoah said Ghana had no reason to fail in utilising oil revenues to turn the economy around and deliver improved living conditions for its people. He said the TUC expected that the oil revenue would be used to eradicate poverty and misery from the country and that the dependence on foreign aid and its associated conditionalities would soon be a thing of the past. Mr Asamoah also called on the government not to ratify Interim Economic Partnership Agreement initiated by the former government. Instead he proposed that the government should partner Ghana's neighbours, in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), to negotiate a trade agreement that served the development interest of the sub-region. Mr Ransford Tetteh, the President of the Ghana Journalist Association (GJA), said the GJA and the TUC had the same desire to work towards improved service conditions for workers. He said as a result of their common bond, the GJA was ready to collaborate with the TUC to share experiences to ensure that journalists earned adequate remuneration for their work. Source: Daily Graphic/Ghana