The Chamber in Partnership with Deloitte organized a dialogue session at the MJ Grand Hotel on 5th October 2023.The meeting focused on
- Tax Trends – New Development in Ghanaian Tax Laws (CIT, VAT) Going through Tax Audits
- The IMF Deal – Potential Impact on Businesses
- ESG Trends – Sustainability/ESG Reporting Requirements
The speakers at the event were Gideon Ayi-Owoo is a Chartered Accountant with over 16 years “Big 4” accounting firm experience, working with clients across all business spectrums by providing tax advisory services. Naa Atswei Koney Esq (Sustainability/ESG Lawyer and Strategist) and Dennis Brown (Chartered Accountant/Financial Consultant)
Gideon spoke extensively on the 2023 Tax Policy Changes and Implications for businesses. He mentioned that as part of the fiscal reform under the IMF, the IMF Fiscal Affairs Department identified the following areas to increase tax revenue: Removing VAT exemptions (estimated to increase revenue by 2% of GDP), Reforming the CIT by phasing out tax holidays and exemptions and strengthening safeguards against profit shifting, Reducing customs exemptions, Increasing progressivity in personal income taxes, automatically adjusting fuel levies by exchange rate movement or inflation and adopting the new fiscal regime for the extractive industries. He concluded by stating that organizations should anticipate and sense changes in the global and local economy, block compliance leakages by conducting a tax health check for all open years and lastly create response mechanism for sustained regulatory pressure and scrutiny.
Dennis presented on the IMF Programme and stated that the program is targeted at restoring macroeconomic stability and anchoring debt sustainability while protecting the most vulnerable section of the population hence there has been a shift in government agenda.
Sustainability has become an extraordinarily disruptive phenomenon impacting business, and ia multitude of different ways. From political decision-making to our daily lives, sustainable thinking is infiltrating the very fabric of our society. She stated sustainability is a condition for a company to access over time the resources and relationships needed (such as financial, human and natural), ensuring their proper preservation, development and regeneration, to achieve its goals”.
EUROPEAN UNION – CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING DIRECTIVE
All listed companies + large companies that exceed 2/3 of the following:
• Balance sheet total: > EUR 20M
• Net revenue: > EUR 40M
• > 250 average number of employees during the FY ~ 50,000 companies in the EU
- Companies with listed securities in the European Union, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
