GRA moves to widen scope of VAT Compliance Exercise
By Selorm GBORBIDZI, Accra
The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has ramped up it’s Value Added Tax (VAT) Invigilation Exercise from a VAT compliance exercise to a full tax compliance exercise.
In this new phase of the exercise, the Authority will not just check business entities for compliance with their VAT obligations, but upon discovery of any infractions, it will automatically expand it’s scope of investigations to cover other tax areas like, the personal income tax, Pay-as-you-earn (PAYE), excise tax, among others.
The Head of Accra Central Area Enforcement Manager of the GRA, Joseph Annan, told the media after another round of visits to the premises of some business entities that the GRA was not going to relent in its drive to identify and fish out non-VAT compliant businesses.
He noted that whereas many businesses have not registered for VAT, many more are also engaging in selective issuance of the VAT invoice to the public.
He said, “we are not limited to VAT, because in order to achieve the target, we have to look at all tax types. The type of work you do will determine the kind of taxes you have to pay.”
As I said, now we’re going to do full compliance. When we come to your shoo, we may come there on the strength of test searching, but then when we come, we want to look at other tax types that you have to pay.”
The Assistant Commissioner also indicated that the GRA has tweaked its operating strategy a bit, and is not just going around arresting business operators, but is giving opportunity to these suspected business operators to hand themselves in, lest the Authority come after them and seal off their operations.
He made these comments after the GRA enforcement team visited about 10 businesses in East Legon and Adentang to check on their operations.
For this particular exercise, the GRA directed it’s gaze to operators in the hospitality industry, such as the Golden Key Hotel, Royal Cockpit Hotel, Kingsbridge Royale Hotel all located at East Legon, and Look & Pick Company Ltd, Adez Mart, Mandamond at Pantang and Lesfam Company Limited.
