Vice-President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has kicked against suggestions for churches in the country to be taxed.
Speaking at a meeting with religious leaders as part of his nationwide tour, Dr. Bawumia, who is the flagbearer of the governing New Patriotic Party, said the church is playing a crucial role towards the development of the country and should rather be incentivized and not taxed.
“If you look at the work the church is doing, in fact, we should rather be paying them instead of they paying us. Unless you don’t understand the work the church has done,” he stated.
Calls for the possible taxation of churches was ignited in 2018 following the opulent lifestyles and display of wealth by some church leaders.
The calls reached a cresando when president Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo threw his weight behind the suggestion.
President Akufo-Addo criticized the church, stating that it has departed from it’s acts of generosity and contributing to the development and shaping of society to wealth making, thus justifying calls for its taxation.
But in what appears to be a renewal of the conversation on whether or not to tax churches and other religious establishment, the governing party leader said he would rather give incentives to the churches to support their activities instead of taxing them.
He argued that the church is playing a critical role in unifying the country and developing its human resources and should be considered a development partner by government.
“The way they try to keep the society together, universities, the hospitals, the schools, it is massive. Many churches have 100s of schools. So I don’t see and I will not have a situation where we are taxing. We rather want to give churches incentives to support what government is doing”.
He continued to say, “I want us to be partners in the way that the development partners are with us, you’re our domestic development partners and we will give you incentives to do more”.
