More than 10 million Ghana Cards holders not registered as taxpayers – GRA

The Ghana Revenue Authority has disclosed that more than 10 million Ghana Card holders whose information has been migrated to its database are not registered as taxpayers.

According to the revenue arm of government, only 3.08 million Ghana Card holders out of its existing 5.74 million Tax Identification Number (TIN) numbers were found to be taxpayers. The total figure for migrated cards from the National Identification Authority database to the GRA is pegged at 15.99 million.

This however leaves a deficit of 2.66 million existing taxpayers who could not be linked with their Ghana Card information.

GRA Commissioner General Rev. Dr Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah speaking in an interview explained that “the unmatched TIN records have been distributed to their assigned Taxpayer Service Centres for the necessary compliance activities.”

Rev Owusu-Amoah further added that were concerns over some 10 million Ghana Card holders who were yet to be registered in the GRA’s database.

“As our assumption is that they are income earners or potential income earners who have to be captured in our system to enable us to mobilise the needed revenue for the development of the nation,” he is quoted to have said by graphic.com.gh.

Addressing the situation, Dr Owusu-Amoah said there were currently two approaches by which an individual TIN number could be linked to the Ghana Card, which are the automatic linkage and the manual linkage.

“The automatic link occurred when the individual's data transferred from the database of the NIA to that of the GRA were in sync and automatically linked by the integrated system, while the manual link occurred when an individual's data transferred from the database of the NIA to the database of the GRA were not in sync,” he explained.

The GRA boss however urged citizens to honor their tax obligations as part of efforts to support government's domestic revenue mobilisation efforts.

FNOQ