Railways Company owes C9.3 billion in tax

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has taken legal action against the Ghana Railway Company (GRC) for its failure to pay about 9.3 billion cedis made up of outstanding taxes including two billion cedis penalty.

The amount, which became outstanding between August 2001 and December 2003, is made up of tax deductions on the salaries and wages of employees of the GRC, taxes on contracts and supplies to the company.

The action followed the failure of the GRC to pay tax deductions made on the salaries and wages of its employees to the IRS, contrary to Sections 149 of the Internal Revenue Act 2000.

Mr. Abubakari Alhassan, counsel for IRS had told the court at its first appearance on February 13, that IRS had no choice but to drag GRC and Mr. Emmanuel Opoku, the Managing Director to court, after persistent demands to recover the money had failed.

Since the action was instituted, GRC had paid only 200 million cedis. The court, presided over by Iddrisu Mahamadu adjourned the case to April 19, to enable the IRS Commissioner to study a proposal submitted by the GRC to reschedule its debt payment.
The company's representative had earlier submitted a proposal asking IRS to agree to pay the debt on instalment of 200 million cedis a month.
Mr. Kwadwo Owusu, Western regional head of the IRS said that his outfit had rejected an out of court settlement of the indebtedness of GRC because it has no justification to withhold the taxes deducted from its employees salaries and wages for so long.