Commemoration of International Customer Service Week: GRA launches Service Charter
The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has launched a revised Service Charter that serves as a tool for measuring progress and also holding staff accountable for their actions.
It also pledges the authority’s commitment to provide excellent services for customers.
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The charter, which was launched in Accra yesterday as part of activities to commemorate the International Customer Service Week, further outlines specific services and standard of quality to be provided by the authority.
This year’s global celebration of the week is on the theme: “Celebrate service”. The GRA has, however, modified it to read: “GRA celebrates service”.
The week-long celebration, which began last Monday, will end tomorrow, October 7, 2022.
The event attracted many people, including the Board Chairman of the GRA, Tony Oteng-Gyasi, other board members, institutional and individual taxpayers, staff and representatives of sister organisations.
Compliance
The Commissioner-General of the GRA, Rev. Dr Ammisshadai Owusu-Amoah, said the authority was ready to comply with the tenets of the charter.
“I wish to state that we are poised and focused on making our customers experience seamless, smooth and memorable service.
We continue to strive on our journey to be a world-class revenue administration recognised for our professionalism, integrity and excellence,” he added.
He also said new initiatives were being introduced to simplify processes and procedures for tax compliance and mentioned the electronic tax clearance certificate, the electronic invoicing of VAT and the electronic auction, which enables confiscated vehicles and imports to be auctioned electronically, as some of the innovations.
“As an authority, we will continue to apply the carrot-and-stick principle by encouraging compliance, but where the need arises, the appropriate enforcement actions will be employed to ensure that the needed revenue is collected,” Rev. Dr Owusu-Amoah said.
He added that the authority’s revenue target of GH¢80.3 billion for the year required the support of all to achieve.
Digitalisation drive
The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, commended the digitalisation drive of the GRA, but said there was still room for improvement.
In a speech read on his behalf by the Coordinating Director in charge of Operations at the ministry, Stella Williams, the minister said the country had a corporate tax gap of about 85.6 per cent.
He said the gap in import duties (import tax gap) was around 32.5 per cent, while the Value Added Tax (VAT) compliance gap was around 39.3 per cent, according to the last World Bank Tax Gap Analysis Report.
"The bare facts are that under Ghana’s Public Financial Management Strategy (2022-2026), we have indicated that we need to increase our tax-to-GDP ratio to about 23 per cent if we are to reduce the current high debt burden and significantly improve service delivery," Mr Ofori-Atta added.
He acknowledged that paying taxes was never pleasant to any individual or business, and that citizens only paid taxes because they were required to do so.
He, therefore, urged staff of the GRA to serve customers satisfactorily by attending to their needs timeously, courteously and in a non-complicated manner.
