LRA FAILS TO MEET TARGET........Views of the The Change Agent.... 1-Apparently LRA blames poor economic performance; I need not remind you that one of the purpose of taxation as a policy tool to stimulate economic through incentives such as, tax breaks, tax grace periods, reduced tax rates etc.......Being on the ground, i wish to shed some light that LRA has also contributed greatly to discredit Lesotho as an investment destination....it has also let to some of both foreign and local businesses to close down. The effects of closing down the businesses would inevitably inpact on VAT, Customs duties and Income taxes being reduced directly and indirectly.....Some of us have been warning that we would end up in this situation.....because we took time to understand the value chain and drivers of tax base in Lesotho. Granted, the level of tax compliance is far from ideal, but the aggressive approach adopted by LRA has no doubt endorsed LRA as much more a threat to the business than a partner.....I can also share that a lot of people wouldnt mind paying taxes as long as they appreciated that their taxes were put to good use. I am concerned how; in as much as we claim to be well educated, how we seem to ignore the writing on the wall....i.e. the human behavioural implications on the subject of tax....e.g. In some jurisdictions, the matter of paying taxes is a matter of pride....because, tax authorities in those jurisdictions appreciates the importance of a credible public freindly perception. I AM A CA is not the prophet of doom; I just hate playing for a losing team by design. Failure to plan is indeed planning to fail....these are the cited signs of poor planning 1-Targets were missed by 14.6% 2-Targets impossible to meet (It is a very well known theory that targets should be attainable, realistic...etc) 3-Local economic assumptions were far off the mark (in other words, poor intelligence) 4-Economy experienced lesser growth (why....?) 5-Under performance in mining, quarrying construction, wholesale retail and transport and Government failure to implement capital budget...(why....? Because there is not much invstments in these sectors and a lot of them have been assessed huge tax unreasonable penalties, which scares further investment, and banks and investors are reluctant to invest in tax exposed intities)........I could go on and on on my uneducated views.....then i again, may be i have a point.....hahahahah! I AM A CHANGE AGENT???
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 06:15:03 +0000
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