A Chartered Tax Practitioner has stated that Ghanaians have no option in determining whether to pay taxes or not.

Speaking on the Corruption Watch segment on Joy FM's Super Morning Show Wednesday, Dr Isaac Nyame decried the penchant for people not wanting to pay their taxes.

"The culture for tax compliance in Ghana is abysmally low. Various reasons account for this. The average person doesn’t want to pay tax, which is quite disturbing"

Dr Nyame stressed on the importance of taxes for the development of the country.

"Taxes are used for good roads, hospitals, everything that is good for life. We cannot continue to borrow money to do that for ourselves. Because when you borrow money, you’d have to pay. And we pay with tax money. So ultimately, we come back to where we started."

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He noted that payment of taxes is a legal requirement and "the law is very clear as to whom the taxpayers should be, what sort of income should be taxed, what sort of expenditure should be taxed".

In as much as people want to evade tax, Dr Nyame said that there are some taxes which people pay indirectly.

"People buy maybe bottled water, they would have paid tax without noticing that they have paid some tax. It is fairly simple to manage with the indirect taxes, because it’s more of the expenditure tax."

He urged the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to enforce the laws when people fail to pay their taxes.

"Enforcement of the penalty regime is important. Taxation without enforcement cannot work," Dr Nyame reiterated.