GRA embarks on National Tax Campaign to whip up voluntary compliance

The Ghana Revenue Authority has rolled out a new campaign aimed at increasing voluntary tax compliance of tax obligations by the citizenry.

The campaign dubbed “Our Taxes Our Future” is expected to run for the next four weeks and will witness a series of activities geared towards encouraging people to pay their taxes for more developmental projects.

Speaking at the Launch of the campaign in Accra on Wednesday, November 1, 2017, Acting Commissioner-General of GRA, Emmanuel Kofi Nti revealed that “even though many Ghanaians are engaged in income earning activities, especially in the informal sector, only 1.2 million people are registered for tax purposes. Out of this number, about 1 million are in the formal sector, leaving only 200, 000 in the informal sector”

He was disappointed that despite the fact that people in the informal sector constitute the majority of Ghanaians, many of them are left out of the tax bracket resulting in the government not making a lot of revenue for its social intervention programme.

The Acting Commissioner-General noted that “the contribution of the informal sector to total tax revenue remained below 5%. This is in spite of the fact that the economy is dominated by the informal sector. This obviously creates a huge gap in the national kitty.”

He was confident that the successful implementation of this programme will result in greater tax compliance and will increase the awareness on the need to embark this necessary civic education.

Emmanuel Kofi Nti also emphasised some of the slogans developed in line with the campaign which he hopes will yield positive responses from Ghanaians. Some of the slogans include “Taxpayers-Nation builders”, “I have paid my taxes, have you?”, “Every little tax helps” and “Taxes help build great nations.”

The nationwide campaign is being supported by the National Commission for Civic Education and the Information Services Department.

NCCE Deputy Commissioner, Kathleen Addy stressed on the relevance of the collaboration between the two institutions in the information and awareness creation campaign on tax compliance and urged other state institutions to partner her outfit in civic education and awareness creation activities.

Kathleen Addy also touched on the need to adhere to all tax obligations as citizens if we wish to witness the development in other parts of the world especially in the provision of social amenities, security, infrastructure and increase in wages.

“The NCCE as a collaborating partner has been engaged to carry out intensive education on tax compliance utilising our capacity to fulfil this mandate. Mr Chairman, the GRA-NCCE partnership has come to stay and as a constitutional body, the NCCE will strive to ensure that citizens fulfil their civic duty by honestly declaring their taxes. At this juncture let me use this opportunity to call on other state organisations to collaborate with NCCE in all their activities that seek to engage citizens on important national issues" she said.

The campaign launch was graced by institutions and professional bodies such as the Institute of Public Relations Ghana, Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) and Bishops’ Conference, Chattered Institute of Taxation, Ghana and donor partners.