Posted on April 28, 2013



Why, oh why, would a ‘friend’ take a picture of a receipt for electrical goods and like it!? And, by the way, it is NOT ME!

Is the person so proud of his purchases that he/she wants to show off? Is the person aghast at how much the purchases cost in comparison to,let’s say, last year? Or, is the person showing that he didn’t get an official VAT receipt and no tax was collected on the amount?

If it was me, and I’ve already told you it was not, it would be the latter reason. Just recently, there was a lot of news coverage on ‘Africans remittances outweigh Western aid’. I posted the link on http://www.facebook.com/christopherscott with the comment:

“Why don’t we get stats on tax collection country by country and year by year and an analysis of tax collection in relation to aid and remittances?”

I call aid and remittances the double edged sword that stimulates dependency and not growth. Furthermore, I believe it facilitates governments shirking their responsibilities to provide their citizenry with basic human rights and needs.

Now you do the math on how much tax revenue the government does NOT get from the above sale and then multiply it by all those other receipts from all those other electrical stores and hell all those other stores that deal in construction materials, plumbing, tiles, louvres, burglar proofing, t and g etc. etc.

And here’s the big irony, I would expect that most of these big purchases are being made by elite factions…diasporans, high government officials…..

Should you be interested in other posts on the madinghana blog on the subject of VAT, put out a search…you WILL be surprised at just how passionate I am about this avenue as the key to poverty alleviation and progress/development.

P.S. the name of the store is irrelevant…few retailers issue VAT receipts-it’s almost a recipe for failure…..of their business..another irony as society fails…