A member of the e-levy technical committee from the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Patrick Osei Danso, has commended the activities of the charging entities which are ensuring the collection of the e-levy in the country.
Mr Danso revealed that just like every other system implementation at its initial stage, there were some challenges with technology and also with people not understanding the entire process of the e-levy. However, he explained that they have moved forward and GRA’s introduction of the “modified phase approach”, ensures that charging entities which make deductions are mindful of exemptions, like the GHC100 a day and accounts to the Authority.
“I can say that so far, we’ve done a lot and our target, like where we are looking at, our charging entities that we know… so far, they are doing well with us. All the transactions we are seeing are good.”
Patrick Osei Danso
Highlighting some of the challenges with the implementation of the levy, Mr Danso indicated that there have been some few issues with bank account to wallet transfers. He stated that this feature is supposed to be exempted under the law but currently “you find out that when you move the money the bank deducts the e-levy [and] they are not supposed to do that”.
Mr Danso opined that when this happens, there is the need to “report to your bank that you are the same person [and] the bank has to reverse it”.
Commenting on how much the Authority has managed to rake in, a month down the line of the e-levy implementation, Mr Danso intimated that his outfit does not currently know the exact amount of revenue accrued since the charging entities are yet to report to GRA on the data. He however noted that the Authority expects these entities to start reporting on revenues after May 31, 2022.
“When they take the money, until you report to GRA, we will not know how much you’ve collected… We have few issues that are coming up [with] reversals where a wrongful charge has been done. They have to correct all those things and do reconciliation, then they come and report to us.”
Patrick Osei Danso
Progress on e-levy education
The member of the e-levy technical committee expressed that since the implementation began, the GRA has done a lot of education and trained its officers across the country. Citing an instance, he explained that they have partnered with the information service department to target the grassroots nationwide to enlighten them on the levy.
“They have started [and] they are doing that one with our offices at the local level… When this e-levy came up, a lot of misconceptions were in the public domain, so people didn’t understand it very well. So, I always tell people that the name is what it means; it means electronic transfer levy. So, when people were saying that if you cash out, they’ll charge you, if you cash in they’ll charge you, they were not part of it, foreign remittances were not part of it… so, most of them were saying that they didn’t understand it well, now, they are getting it. Once GRA is taking over and they are explaining things, people understand it. So, the education I can say, we’ve done a lot and we are still doing more.”
Patrick Osei Danso
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