Ghana Revenue Authority goes after 5,000 wealthy tax evaders
The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) is going after some 5,000 wealthy Ghanaians who have been evading taxes, despite operating different levels of businesses in the country.
At a press briefing in Accra on Wednesday, July 28, the Assistant Commissioner of GRA, Dr Charles Addae, said, the individuals, aged 35 and 65, “are high potential individuals who have businesses and living within Ghana.”
These high potential individuals include doctors, lawyers, engineers, computer scientists, financial service professionals, executives.
“I am not talking about Greater Accra alone. They have houses in places like East Legon and other affluent areas,” he noted, adding that the culprits are people residing mostly in the top 10 affluent communities of the country.
“However, we have been able to identify their telephone numbers, and they do not have tax identification numbers (TIN) so we are chasing them,” Dr Addae said.
The Assistant Commissioner of GRA also stated that the authority has identified an additional 20,000 Ghanaians of high earning professions who have not registered for their TIN.
He then urged Ghanaians who were yet to file their tax returns to take advantage of the government’s penalty and interest waiver regime to file their taxes to avoid being sanctioned.
GRA targets GH₵60 billion revenue for 2021
Providing figures on revenue mobilisation, he said GRA has challenged itself to collect GH₵60 billion, a growth of 32.6% over the 2020 performance and 14.2% of the projected Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the year 2021.
So far, total non-oil tax revenue of GH¢25.88 billion has been collected, against the budget of GH¢ 26.1 billion for the first six months of 2021 (January to June 2021).
However, the performance fell short of the budget by GH¢212.92 million, representing a fall of 0.8%.
On domestic tax revenue, GRA recorded a growth of 20.7%, with international trade tax revenue (Customs) growing by 39.6%.
READ ALSO: Only Six Million Ghanaians Pay Income Tax – GRA
According to GRA, only six million Ghanaians, out of the 14 million registered taxpayers, actually filed their taxes at the end of March this year.
The Commissioner-General of the GRA, Reverend Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah, disclosed this on Wednesday, July 21, at a forum organised by the Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GNCCI).
Rev Owusu-Amoah was briefing the audience on the ongoing campaign to integrate the Ghana Card number and TIN. Ghanaians will no longer need to keep a unique TIN as the Ghana Card gradually becomes a supreme form of identification.
According to the GRA boss, so far, 14 million unique tax numbers have been merged with Ghana Cards. However, of these individuals, only a mere 43% have fulfilled their legitimate income taxes by filing returns.
Revenue mobilisation strategies
Meanwhile, as part of efforts to raise more revenue for the government’s developmental projects and support the economic revitalisation and transformation, he said, the authority has taken a number of measures to that effect.
This includes leveraging third-party data to enhance compliance through cross-referencing GRA tax data against institutions such as the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SNNIT), Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
The authority is also optimising domestic tax collection operations through digitisation. This, it expects to increase tax revenue collection efficiency.
The authority would achieve this through enhanced compliance measures, strengthening tax administration, and improvement in the ease of doing business with GRA.
In addition to this is the integration of TIN with the NIA card number. In this regard, GRA on April 1, 2021, collaborated with the Registrar-General’s Department (RGD) and the NIA to replace the existing TIN with the Ghana Card number.
According to the authority, this has made analysing and mining the NIA data to enable GRA to identify opportunities for additional taxpayers.