Government through the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has deferred the implementation of the government’s policy directive on reversal of reductiion in benchmark value to January 6, 2021 to allow those who got their duty bill before the directives to pay and cleared their cargoes.
According to a message sent to various agencies, the GRA said the implementation of the government’s directive on reversal of reduction of values of import on selected items which was set to take effect from Tuesday January 4, 2022 has been deferred to January 6, 2022.
“(1) for any assesed BOE that was affected by the earlier directive of January 4, 2022, a post entry will be required to reverse the effect of the policy on the calculated tax.”
“(2) effective Thursday, any declaration not yet entered (where duty and taxes have not yet been paid or security not deposited) will be affected by the policy. A post entry will be required to enable recalculation of taxes based on the policy.
(3) where BOE tax assessment is accepted but tax has not been paid, a post entry is required to enable recalculation of taxes based on the policy,” excerpts of the message said.
The benchmark value, which is the amount taxable on imports, was reduced by 50 percent for some goods. The government had hoped that this was going scale up he volume of transactions to make Ghana’s ports competitive.
The government decided to reverse this decision after it met opposition from Association of Ghana Industries and the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA).
By Vincent Kubi