The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has brought onto its electronic Value Added Tax (E-VAT) system over 3,000 taxpayers (businesses) since its inception in 2022. 

The authority said it held series of talks with more than 5,000 taxpayers across the country last year, and those entities were all ready for onboarding.

The acting Commissioner-General of GRA, Anthony Kwasi Sarpong, who disclosed this to the Daily Graphic, assured that there would be an enhanced use of technology in the implementation of the E-VAT.

Declining to mention the current vendor or whether it would procure a new vendor, the GRA boss said the use of enhanced technology fell in line with the move to review the entire VAT payment system to capture all VAT registered taxpayers across the board and provide an improved and upgraded platform.

Mr Sarpong expressed the belief that the new system would be capable of providing a simplified VAT accounting system for all taxpayers.

“The electronic VAT exercise is ongoing but as you may be aware, we’re doing a comprehensive review of the entire structure, and the Minister for Finance is seriously giving it some attention, so we are hoping to conclude the work soon to seek parliamentary approval,” the Commissioner-General of GRA said.

“What I can assure you is that the process is getting more enhanced and modern technology will play a key role to ensure full accountability at the end of the day,” the former Country Partner of Accounting and advisory firm, KPMG, stated.

Mr Sarpong said GRA would continue to onboard taxpayers after the directive from the minister to ensure an equitable tax system.

Since 2022 after the pilot, VAT revenue from the pilot to the second phase has been growing due to the onboarded taxpayers, the authority said.

In 2024, VAT revenue from the onboarded taxpayers grew by 28 per cent, the GRA said.

Compliance exercise

Mr Sarpong said a compliance exercise with the existing tax payers on-board was underway  .

“This is expected to support the assessment of the exercise to ascertain its performance as the implementation enters the final stage,” he added.

The GRA conducted the compliance exercise from April to May this year.

It involved random test purchases and invoice verification on selected onboarded taxpayers.

Challenges with approach

The GRA boss said  the on-boarding exercise was ongoing despite challenges with taxpayer systems and technicalities on the approach for the entire process.

He explained that the E-VAT system was part of the mandated provisions in the Revenue Administration Act, 2016 (Act 915) for the Commissioner-General to ensure an equitable and fair tax administration system.

“E-VAT implementation will help to formalise a large number of informal taxpayers, boost domestic tax revenue, improve efficiency in tax administration and support effective tax audits,” Mr Sarpong stressed.