The Ghana Income Authority has outlined actions to enable strengthen earnings for the federal government as the coronavirus pandemic hit the many sectors of the economic system.
Speaking on PM Categorical Small business Edition on the JoyNews Channel, the Commissioner-Standard of the Ghana Earnings Authority, Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah mentioned, “The Income Authority is like any other business enterprise or any other specific in the midst of storms you require to retreat, glance at the problem, appear at what has transpired and test to strategize to see how do you keep yourself going.
“What we are carrying out today is really seeking at the targets, searching at the spots that have been influenced. Examining the expectations of these regions that have been impacted. We are doing evaluation and we will be ready to occur out with what we see as the sensible earnings that we can foresee from these areas…”
He extra, “therefore I count on that by the time we arrive to the mid-yr evaluation, we will function collectively with our sector Ministry and be equipped to function out our expectations. But in all these things we really don’t have to just fold your arms and say practically nothing can come about.”
Mr Owusu-Amoah mentioned, “The calendar year begun very very well, January, February but from March and April the earnings has started off going down and for that reason we need to have to strategize to uncover methods of conference some of the revenues. Some of the spots that you hope to some falls include things like the excise duties.
“We have completed a large amount of investigation as the Minister of Finance previously presented to parliament. We will also be searching at it once again when we are coming to the mid-12 months and together with our sector ministry we will be capable to occur out with how deep the gap would be and what are the designs that we have place in place to make certain that we mitigate the hole.”
E-commerce
He reported though other sectors are getting hit really hard by the covid- 19 pandemic, some other sectors like the communication sector is booming. “Today info is just one detail we are all consuming for that reason we anticipate that all those in that sector really should see their revenues going up.”
On means to get e-commerce corporations to shell out taxes, Mr Amishadia reported “as at this instant, we have continue to not begun taxing e-commerce. It is just one of the matters that are already in our strategic approach that we are doing the job on for this yr and thus we will arrive out with it at the correct time.
“As aspect of our procedures, we also have the VAT which we are automating, we are seeking at the Integrated Tax Software stop-to-close that is also becoming worked on. So these are selected initiatives that are ongoing,” he included.
Tax officers
On measures currently being taken to protect tax officers through this time period, Mr Owusu-Amoah stated the GRA has made available plenty of PPEs, sanitizers for tax officers to be capable to accomplish their duty. “…we’ve also been ready to get our Customs laboratory to make our possess sanitizers some of which we now use in most of our places of work.”
He included, “So at present we really don’t invest in any sanitizers from any vendor, we offer ample sanitizers for all our 14,000 employees across the region and sufficient also for all our taxpayers who arrive into our places of work. This makes certain that equally the taxpayer and our officers are guarded.
“In addition, we have also allowed for some of the workers to operate from dwelling, we are even ordering about 3000 laptops so that we can have them do the job from house.”
