Car dealers to meet Ken over luxury tax

The leadership of the Car Owners and Dealers Association will next week meet the Ministry of Finance to discuss the luxury Vehicle Tax policy.

The association maintains the policy is crippling their businesses hence its call for it to be scrapped.

This tax was introduced by the government in 2018 to increase domestic revenue mobilization.

Speaking to Citi News the president of the Car Owners and Dealers Association, Eric Boateng said he is hopeful the government would listen to their concerns about the tax.

“[We are meeting the ministry] for the abolition of the luxury tax which we demonstrated against. We sent our petition to all the ministries, including the fiance ministry, parliament and the Jubilee house. We were waiting for their response  which never came, but fortunately two days they (finance ministry) gave us a call that we should come to the negotiation table for discussion.”

Luxury vehicle tax ill-conceived, gov’t must scrap it – Mahama

The Presidential candidate of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Mahama has said his administration will scrap the luxury vehicle tax if it comes to power.

Describing the levy as an ill-conceived one, he said its introduction has overburdened commercial drivers.

Mr. Mahama has thus urged drivers to exercise restraint as the NDC will not hesitate to abolish the policy.

“Not too long ago, the government introduced the luxury vehicle tax. This tax was not well thought through before it was rolled out. They should have exempted all commercial vehicles. There are commercial vehicles without the yellow plates, but rather white plates yet they carry commercial goods. Once they exceed three litres, they are charged this luxury tax. This has brought untold hardship on some of the drivers especially those who work for the companies and others. Just recently, I heard that government has only been able to raise GHC 25million from the luxury tax if that is the case, then they should abolish it. If they don’t, we the NDC government will abolish it when we come into power,” he added.

Luxury vehicles tax 

The government has collected some GH¢21.3 million in taxes from the use of vehicles with engine capacities of 2.9 litres and above between August and December last year, provisional fiscal data on public finances for last year has shown.

The amount is GH¢82.7 million or 79.52 per cent below the GH¢104million that was projected to be collected within the period. The projections were contained in the 2018 mid-year budget review.

The government expects to rake in at least 300 million cedis from the tax on luxury vehicles by the end of 2019

The tax, which forms part of the new policy measures introduced in the midyear budget review, is to help bridge the gap in revenue for the first half of the year [2018].

The figure was disclosed when Parliament passed the four bills approving the taxes introduced by the government.