The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has revealed that it is on course to achieve its revenue target for 2019 and is in a frame of mind to achieve that goal by hook or crook.
Commissioner General, Amishadai Owusu Amoah, announces that a new line of tactics that the Commission is deploying to achieve the target will include ruthless loan shark methods to exact taxes owed government from those in default. “On tax debt collection, there are many people who owe the GRA or for that matter the Government of Ghana taxes and we also want to assure them that we are doing a massive debt collection.
Wherever there is any debt outstanding, you either come to sit with the GRA and agree on acceptable terms in line with the law and pay or we will use the enforcement methods that are legally available to the authority. “These include things like lockups, it include things like garnishment and many other methods of enforcement.
And so far we have even written to many banks to garnish a number of accounts and we will continue aggressively on this to ensure that we collect all the outstanding taxes so that we can have money to develop our dear country,” Mr. Amoah said.
The vibe will not be seen as a wholesome one by critics of government who think that the better solution to Ghana’s tax revenue problems is broadening the tax net rather than over taxing just a few identified tax payers. 2019’s tax revenue target set for the GRA by government is Ghs45billion.
The GRA reports that it has achieved 70% of that target already with 2019 left with some two months to close. GRA has over the years been synonymous with underachieving on its revenue goals. The last time it met its revenue target was in 2016, when it surpassed the target by some ghs600million.