Open more offices for TIN registration – Consultant to GRA

Business News of Monday, 26 November 2018

Source: citinewsroom.com

2018-11-26

Ali Nakyea11Abdallah Ali Nakyea, Tax consultant

Tax consultant, Abdallah Ali Nakyea, has called on the Ghana Revenue Authority to open more offices across the country to help speed up the issuance of Tax Identification Numbers (TIN), and also help with effective revenue mobilization.

His comments follow several complaints by some Ghanaians who are struggling in their attempt to secure their TIN.

While some say they’ve been asked to give bribes before getting their TIN, others have complained about waiting for weeks to get theirs.

Speaking to Citi Business News, Ali Nakyea, said government’s best option at reaching more businesses for tax collection as well as making registration for the TIN easier will be to aggressively increase its footprint across the country.

“Why doesn’t the GRA revisit what we call the regional offices concept? So that in every region there is a large tax payer office, a medium and a small”.

“That way there is that kind of segregation, there is that kind of getting down to the tax payer, because one of the basic principles of taxation is that the tax office should be as close as possible to the tax payer. And if we want tax payers to comply we need to let it to be easy for them,” he added.

Reacting to the concerns, the Assistant Commissioner in Charge of Public Affairs at the GRA, Kwasi Bobie-Ansah, mentioned that the Authority is putting in place measures to address all the issues associated with acquiring the TIN, and that no Ghanaian should wait for more than 3 days for their TIN.

“Initially when we started, because the equipment had not been deployed to all the offices, we had that challenge. So we had a backlog of TIN applications in the system. But since then we have deployed the equipment to all the offices, so under normal circumstances it shouldn’t take you more than 3 days to get your TIN.”

The GRA has in recent times reiterated its earlier directive which requires all businesses and individuals to obtain a TIN before they are able to conduct official business and access certain services in the country.

قالب وردپرس