Emmanuel Kofi Nti
The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) missed its 2018 revenue target of GH?39,802.27 billion by GH?2171.73 or -5.5 percent.
The authority planned to collect GH?23,588.41 billion in domestic taxes, but recorded GH?24,438.75, an excess of GH?850.35 million or 3.5 percent.
The Customs Division was also given a target GH?16,213.86 billion but it realised GH?13,191.07 billion, a deviation of GH?3,022.07 billion or -18.6 percent.
Commissioner-General of GRA, Emmanuel Kofi Nti, said the domestic tax recorded a positive deviation due to increase in compliance as a result of continuous monitoring of taxpayers.
Mr. Nti explained that efforts were being made retrieve taxes from defaulters.
Even though the withholding on VAT helped to boost performance, Mr Nti disclosed that the expected implementation of the electronic point of sales (ePoS) could not materialize.
He averred that the implementation of the excise tax stamp policy was resisted by the beverage industry to amicably resolve the challenges.
On import duties and levies, he said the increase in goods imported into the economy through the suspense regimes and impact of zero rated goods negatively affected the performance of the tax.
2019 Revenue Target
From the national budget, GRA has been tasked to meet a tax revenue target of GH?45,447.26 billion for this year.
Touching the government’s ‘Ghana Beyond Aid,’ vision, the Commissioner-General said there were ongoing discussions to revise the target upward.
Thus, the GRA would marshal all its efforts to considerably improve its collection for the year.
“Even for 2018, where we faced considerable challenges, we were able to achieve a 16.4 percent growth over the 2017 collection.”
He revealed that GRA would intensify its activities to identify and plug revenue leakages.
“Hopefully, the implementation of the electronic Point of Sales (ePoS) device in the course of the year will help address shortfalls in VAT collection, full implementation of the excise tax stamp policy as the big industry players are onboard following the expiration of the deadline given them to install affixing equipment.”
He further cited efforts to broaden the tax net, full implementation of the tax identification number (TIN) as a requirement for carrying out transactions by the identified state agencies and regular and consistent visits to business centres by GRA staff.”
These, he said, would be complemented by NABCO graduates to help unearth potential taxpayers.
By Paul Nyojah Dalafu