The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) on Wednesday organised a day’s interaction with the diplomatic community and international organisations on the on-going taxpayers’ registration and re-registration exercise in Accra.

The platform was to enhance the understanding and appreciation of participants on the exercise and to enable them to clear their imported goods.

Speaking to journalists at the end of the first session of the programme, Mrs Comfort Boohene Osafo, Domestic Tax Revenue Commissioner, lauded the importance of the day’s interaction, stressing that, though diplomatic staff and High Commissions were tax exempted, the registration and re-registration exercise served a useful data for policy formulation.

Mr Paul Kwakye, Project Manager for the E-gov project said GRA was in discussions with the diplomatic community and international organisations to see how they could collect taxes from their staff on behalf of the Authority.

The e-gov project is a public private partnership between Ghana Community Network Services Limited (GCNet, a customised electronic system, established for processing trade and customs documents in Ghana), and Government, which gives GCNet the mandate to design, finance, build, operate and transfer ownership of an electronic government system with its technical partners for the Registrar-General’s Department (RGD) and GRA.

The project is being implemented to modernise key ministries, departments and agencies, computerise business registration, enhance revenue mobilisation and provide a citizen-friendly services.

It is being rolled out such that GRA would be electronically linked to RGD to enable it have access to their database to assess details of registered businesses for easy tracking and for tax purposes.

Businesses and individuals that register are allocated new tax payer identification numbers which enable them to clear goods from the ports.

The registration process is touted as a means to improve quality of customer records and service delivery, access to a variety of online government services, such as filing of returns, payments, appointment scheduling as well as reduced tax compliance costs.**