The Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) with support from Oxfam Ghana has rolled out regional dialogue sessions to promote progressive corporate taxation and tax compliance towards effective and efficient revenue mobilisation for national development.

The initiative seeks to engage private sector players, civil society organisations and revenue collection agencies of the public sector across the 16 regions on challenges impeding smooth tax collection and payments.

In an interview on the sidelines of the dialogue in Takoradi, some participants expressed their dissatisfaction on the attitude of Ghana Revenue Authority “GRA” staffs who comes out to lock up shops and companies despite default on tax compliance.

Again, they continued with their frustrations on numerous tax burdens, selective enforcement of sanctions on defaulters, corruption among GRA officials, limited scope of tax net and tax exemptions among others.

In response to the concerns raised by the private sector players on tax compliance, Mr. George Amankwa-Boateng, at the Ghana Revenue Authority in western region, Takoradi,    accepted that such report on attitude of GRA taskforce towards taxpayers have come to his notice.

According to him, these taskforce from the Ghana Revenue Authority have been advised to be polite with tax payers and also engage in the application of human face whenever there is conversation between them.

“Even if you want to lock the taxpayers’ shops, do it in a courteous way”, he added.

Furthermore, Private Sector Players urged GRA to do more to engagement with its clients or taxpayers’ education and relationships so that it does not portray that people are being forced to pay taxes.

Meanwhile, a Fiscal Specialist at OXFAM, Dr. Alex Ampaabeng in an exclusive interview hinted that there might be a move for artisans including masons, plumbers’ electricians among others to be paying tax to help the development in Ghana.

According to him, the informal sector makes up about 70 to 80 percent economic activities where the country has no creative way of taxing them.

Dr. Ampaabeng revealed this to Benjamin Bray, a reporter at the just ended Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) regional dialogue sessions which was supported by Oxfam Ghana on Tuesday 30, 2021.

The Fiscal Specialist emphasized that, what government can do on owners of website is to make sure that anybody who is selling online is verified.

He stated that, one of the key areas Government needs to look at online business is to work with platform owners to make sure anyone selling online get registered to be able to account for their trading activities.

“Verifying online business will reduce the incident of scams individuals engage in trading”, Dr. Alex added.

With these recommendations, Dr. Alex Ampaabeng noted that at the end of a year, it would be easier for Ghana Revenue Authority and the Local Assemblies to track the activities of the artisans.

Story By Benjamin Bray