The Ghana Revenue Authority will soon launch a new initiative to target micro and small businesses to file their taxes in a flexible and simplified manner through-out the country.
The move is aimed at widening the tax net and ensuring some domestic revenue loopholes are sealed.
Acting Commissioner General of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Anthony Kwasi Sarpong disclosed this to Joybusiness after engaging executives and selected members of the Ghana Union of Traders Association, GUTA in Accra.
He also assured that the GRA will institute a quarterly engagement with businesses to enhance tax education.
“For GRA, as tax administrators, we mobilize revenue for national development therefore we see businesses as one of the core partners that we deliver on our mandate.
If businesses grow and thrive and are supported, we believe that they will make the necessary profit and we can also collect our taxes so in this respect, GUTA is a big stakeholder in our partnership hence the need to meet some of the executives to explain to them on some of the tax measures” he said.
The initiative known as the Modify Taxation Programme aims to provide a platform for micro businesses to be registered and file their taxes in a simplified way.
The Acting Commissioner General told joybusiness that the engagement with the Ghana Union of Traders Association, GUTA is part of processes to create a friendly customer service environment for both tax payers and the GRA.
“Actually the engagement has been very fruitful after we had the opportunity to explain to them some challenges faced in their tax filling process. We have agreed that we shall have a quarterly engagement with them so we can speak on some of their concerns.
Again we have mentioned processes we’re undertaking to widen the tax net and in this case a number of their members are not registered for taxes and at GRA we will soon be launching the modify taxation programme that allows us to register a number of small, micro and individual businesses and work with them to pay their taxes in a more convenient and simplified manner.
So today was the first engagement with them, we shall definitely move to the market to meet with the actual operators to explain to them so that it becomes easy when we launch it” he disclosed.
President of GUTA, Joseph Obeng expressed confidence that such engagements will boost confidence of businesses in supporting government to meet its revenue target.
The Commissioner General answered questions from members of GUTA and promised to further engage the finance Minister to find solutions to some of their concerns.
