Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Anthony Kwasi Sarpong, says Ghana’s tax landscape is set to be transformed by two key interventions: modified taxation for small businesses and digital surveillance of online transactions.
Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express Business Edition on Thursday, August 21, he described both measures as “game changers” in the government’s effort to stabilise revenue mobilisation despite economic headwinds.
Sarpong explained that revenue performance in the first half of the year was affected by exchange rate fluctuations, which sharply reduced the cedi values of duties and taxes paid in dollars.
“If you look at the duties at the port, they are denominated in foreign currency, mostly in USD. Therefore, once the exchange rate, which is overall good for the economy, dropped from 15 to about 10.5, that’s a 30% sharp drop in cedi terms. So obviously, over a three-month period, what comes in drops by 30%,” he said.
Despite this setback, he expressed confidence that imports and corporate tax flows would recover in the second half of the year.
However, Sarpong stressed that structural reforms are the real drivers of sustainable revenue collections.
“One of those fundamental measures is what we call modified taxation. We’ve talked about expanding the tax base, particularly for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises. Within a month, we are introducing modified taxation to define minimum base taxes that certain categories of businesses will pay,” he explained.
He provided a practical example:
“For example, if your business turnover is 200,000 a year, we are saying just pay 3% of that. That probably works out to 3,000 or 5,000 for the entire year. That is all a small or medium enterprise has to pay.”
Sarpong added that GRA will deploy a dedicated mobile app to make registration and payment seamless, allowing businesses to comply without leaving their operating environments.
He highlighted the potential impact of this shift on revenue:
“It is estimated that we have over 5 million such businesses in Ghana. Let’s assume we bring 2 million of them into the tax net. If on average these businesses pay 5,000 cedis a year, that is 10 billion cedis, translating to 1 billion cedis a year with potential to grow.”
Alongside modified taxation, Sarpong said a nationwide tax education campaign will be launched next month to improve civic awareness.
“We’ve been doing a lot of tax education over the years, but many Ghanaians are still not fully aware of their civic responsibilities regarding contributing part of their income. By next month, we are launching a continuous nationwide tax education campaign with other stakeholders,” he said.
Turning to technology, Sarpong emphasised that the digital economy cannot remain outside the tax net.
“Data and technology are key to ensuring that GRA stays ahead of the curve. Today, many young people do business online, use services like Uber or Bolt, and make purchases electronically. This is the future of taxation, and we must be ready now and in the future,” he said.
He confirmed that before the end of the year, GRA will roll out digital surveillance tools to capture online transactions at the point of payment.
“We are introducing digital technology to give us visibility of online transactions. We can see the value of these transactions and detect the tax component at the point of payment. This will be a game changer for both foreign and local institutions trading in Ghana,” Sarpong added.
Source: Abubakar Ibrahim
