Major new tax legislation set for 2020

The Finance Ministry and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) have resolved to introduce critical measures to deepen tax revenue collection for 2020 and beyond.

Key to this is that the GRA, with the backing of the Ministry of Finance will see to the passage of the Revenue Administration Regulations and an updated Transfer Pricing Regulations in the coming year.

The move, according to the GRA is intended to consolidate the gains made as a result of the implementation of reforms in the revenue sector in 2019.

Meanwhile, the Finance Ministry is also taking a closer look at existing legislation that requires taxpayers to disclose their aggressive tax planning arrangements to drive compliance.

GRA’s Commissioner General, Mr Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah told the Goldstreet Business that a key driver for all these measures, is the need to strengthen and improve the legal basis of tax policies to ensure fairness and equity in taxing individuals and businesses.

“That, the GRA aims to achieve and to deepen in order to strengthen the country’s tax collection systems” he indicated.

Instructively the GRA in the last couple of years, falls short of its revenue target. However, the authority has recorded a growth of 12.8 percent in tax revenue in 2019, over last year’s collection.

But the authority, nevertheless has once again seems to fail to meet its 2019 tax target of GHc45 billion with taxes collected at the end of November this year, amounting to GHc37 billion.

Key measures to address the challenges militating against tax mobilization from next year, according to the GRA, will be to continue the intensification of tax education and stakeholder engagements, expedition of digitization drives to make tax payment more taxpayer-convenient and the increased registration of taxpayer identification numbers (TIN) among others.