The Ghana Revenue Authority is the Ghana administration charged with the task of assessing, collecting and accounting for tax revenue in Ghana.
With just three weeks for the newly introduced Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy) to be implemented, the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) management says it will establish helplines to address wrongful charges of customers.
Given that the tax policy is the first of its kind in the country, a Principal Revenue Officer and Head of the Project Management Unit of the Authority, Isaac Kobina Amoako, said it might come with some challenges.
Thus, the helplines will give room for affected citizens to lodge their complaints for the Authority to address them.
He made this known when contributing to the topic, ‘E-Levy: Demystifying the revenue measure ahead of implementation’ on JoyNews’ The Probe.
“Once we go live, we will have helplines to receive complaints about wrongful charges so we’ve made provisions.
“When you are wrongfully charged it should be refunded to you,” he said.
Speaking on Sunday, Mr Amoako, however, noted that GRA is adequately prepared to ensure the smooth implementation of the new tax.
“We have a system ready that we’ve asked all the charging entities to connect to. So the system is ready and we are testing towards May 1, so by then we should be ready to go,” he stated.
Since E-levy was proposed by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta when he was presenting the 2022 budget in November 2021, it has generated a lot of controversy in Parliament and amongst the populace.
He explained that the “innovative” tax will broaden the government’s revenue generation basket.
However, economists and the Minority in Parliament said the Levy will only intensify the hardships of average Ghanaians.
After nearly three months of back and forth including fisticuffs among Parliamentarians, the E-Levy Bill was passed by Majority-sided Parliament on Tuesday, March 29.
The Levy was passed at a reduced rate of 1.5% from the initial 1.75% amid a Minority walkout.
The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) was established in 2009 as a merger of the three revenue agencies, i.e. the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Value Added Tax Service (VATS) and the Revenue Agencies Governing Board (RAGB) in accordance with the Ghana Revenue Authority Act 2009, (Act 791).
Our core mandate is to ensure maximum compliance with all relevant tax laws in order to ensure a sustainable revenue stream for government, trade facilitation and a controlled and safe flow of goods across the country’s borders. We also administer a number of international agreements that govern our relations with other tax jurisdictions and institutions such as World Customs Organisation Protocols, World Trade Organisation Protocols, Double Taxation and Exchange of Information Agreements.
The Authority is made up of two operational divisions; Domestic Tax Revenue Division (DTRD), and Customs Division (CD) with assistance from the Support Services Division (SSD) and the Commissioner General’s Secretariat.
