Cut expenditure, not planting GRA officers in shops – Pianim

An Economist, Kwame Pianim, has stated that the government must take steps to cut its expenditure instead of planting GRA officials in shops to check VAT invoices. He noted that the act was "irritating" at a time when Ghanaians are going through economic hardships. "Cut expenditure, not planting GRA officers in shops; people are suffering; when people are suffering, that is not when you irritate them." "Things are not going well, and we are looking for the President to come up the way he did during Covid; we need a credible message from him that 'I am going to cut expenditure to stabilize the economy," he is quoted by 3news. The positioning of GRA officials in various shops and trading centres was part of measures by the Authority to ensure that businesses file their taxes accurately while using the newly introduced E-VAT system. The Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Rev. Amishaddai Owusu Amoah, disclosed that during an invigilation exercise by the Authority, it was found that some entities understate taxes and earnings by 1700%. According to him, the results from the monitoring of about 53 entities showed that shops were filing below their due taxes. He noted that a shop invigilation exercise was done by sending people as mystery shoppers of stationing officials in shops to check invoices as customers trooped in. Speaking to GhanaWeb on the sidelines of the Ghana Economic Forum on October 25, 2022, he said, "Out of the results we had when you look at the filing, what the entity has filed for June, July, and August, and you compare what we found in September the difference is more than 100 %, and some of them go as high as 1700%." Watch the latest episode of BizTech below: SSD/FNOQ

An Economist, Kwame Pianim, has stated that the government must take steps to cut its expenditure instead of planting GRA officials in shops to check VAT invoices. He noted that the act was "irritating" at a time when Ghanaians are going through economic hardships. "Cut expenditure, not planting GRA officers in shops; people are suffering; when people are suffering, that is not when you irritate them." "Things are not going well, and we are looking for the President to come up the way he did during Covid; we need a credible message from him that 'I am going to cut expenditure to stabilize the economy," he is quoted by 3news. The positioning of GRA officials in various shops and trading centres was part of measures by the Authority to ensure that businesses file their taxes accurately while using the newly introduced E-VAT system. The Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Rev. Amishaddai Owusu Amoah, disclosed that during an invigilation exercise by the Authority, it was found that some entities understate taxes and earnings by 1700%. According to him, the results from the monitoring of about 53 entities showed that shops were filing below their due taxes. He noted that a shop invigilation exercise was done by sending people as mystery shoppers of stationing officials in shops to check invoices as customers trooped in. Speaking to GhanaWeb on the sidelines of the Ghana Economic Forum on October 25, 2022, he said, "Out of the results we had when you look at the filing, what the entity has filed for June, July, and August, and you compare what we found in September the difference is more than 100 %, and some of them go as high as 1700%." Watch the latest episode of BizTech below: SSD/FNOQ