Dr Charles Addae, the Deputy Commissioner in charge of Research, Strategy, Policy and Programmes at Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has revealed that GRA missed its revenue target for the first half of the year.
According to Dr Charles Addae, the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) collected GH¢25.89 billion in tax revenue as against GH¢26.1 billion targeted for the period and thus, resulted in a GH¢212 million shortfall.
Meanwhile, he noted that the Ghana Revenue Authority collected GH¢18.45 billion in domestic tax revenue and GH¢7.44 billion from international trade or customs.
However, despite the shortfalls, he noted that the tax revenue collected in the first half of the year showed a nominal growth of 25.6 per cent.
On the flip side, Dr Addae explained that if the tax collections from other tax revenue sources such as: energy debt recovery levy, sanitation levy, Valued Added Tax and airport charges were added, the GRA would have collected GH¢27.17 billion as against a target of GH¢27.25 billion, representing a GH¢28 million shortfall.
While assessing the average performance of the Authority, Dr Addae noted that the current data show that “the Authority is hovering around 47.6 per cent, which is above 46 per cent recorded over the past five years.”
Regional Breakdown
Moreover, touching on the contribution of the various regions to the country’s tax revenue, Dr Addae singled out the Greater Accra Region for praise revealing that the region has contributed a whopping 60.28 per cent. In addition, he stated that Western Region also accounted for 5.02 per cent and Ashanti Region on the other hand contributed 4.2 per cent to the tax revenue.
He however indicated that the rest of other 13 regions’ contributions to the nation’s tax revenue is very minimal.
Dr Addae further observed that with the ongoing linkage of the GRA’s database to the National Identification Authority’s database, it discovered that over 33,500 professionals, including medical doctors, engineers, lawyers and IT experts have Ghana-Card but did not have tax identification numbers(TIN).
He explained that those elite professionals are earning high incomes so, the GRA invited them for interrogation to ascertain whether or not they were paying taxes on their earnings.
“We are chasing them because now we have their house and mobile phone numbers but that doesn’t mean that they don’t pay taxes until we have finished the interrogation.”
Dr Addae
Collaboration between GRA and GIZ
Meanwhile, Dr Addae hinted that the Authority is working collaboratively with German International Corporation (GIZ) and the Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development Ministry to digitise and capture houses and properties being used for commercial businesses and residential purposes to charge the appropriate rent tax on them.
Conclusively, he advocated for the need to intensify tax education drive and enforcement mechanisms to shore up the tax revenue.
However, the GRA this year, set a target of GH¢60 billion in tax revenue and based on the first-half performance, Dr Addae believes that the GRA could meet the target for the year.
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