Vice President and flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Mahama Bawumia, is promising to give churches incentives instead of supporting a former call to tax religious institutions.
At a campaign tour in the Bono East Region where he met Clergymen, Dr. Bawumia said he finds it unnecessary to have the church taxed, even though his government some time back in 2018 had explored the idea of introducing a special tax on churches.
“My view on this is simple. When you look at the work that churches have done, in fact, we should rather be paying them rather than they paying us. Unless you don’t understand the work the church has done. So I don’t see, and I will not have a situation where we are taxing the churches. We rather want to give churches incentives to support what the government is doing,” Dr. Bawumia said.
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Churches should rather be paid instead of being taxed… – Dr. Bawumia (NPP Flagbearer)#StarrFM #StarrNews pic.twitter.com/s7iKzqj3Pk
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The Vice President’s stance now appears at odds with his boss, President Nana Akufo-Addo, who when he hinted at the idea back in 2018, found it proper, indicating that the church has now shifted from its charity stance to wealth creation.
“The difficult truth is once you get into the wealth and prosperity sphere you necessarily slip into the tax and accounting language. When you step out of the charity sphere, out of education, health care you are putting yourself in the line of the tax man,” President Akufo-Addo said when he gave a speech at a synod of the Global Evangelical church at the University of Ghana.
Although the proposal faced some opposition back then, those in support of it saw it as a viable intervention to fund the national cathedral – a pet project of President Akufo-Addo, which was widely endorsed by popular clergymen.
