IRS to achieve GH¢2.23b target

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) says it will achieve its target of GH¢ 2.235 billion by close of 2010, B&FT has learnt.

The Service’s half year collection stood at GH¢1,074.70 million against the target of GH¢1,055.89. This represents marginal increase of 1.8 percent.

In 2009, the Service exceeded its targeted revenue collection of GH¢1,554,542,500, representing an increase of 14.4 per cent.

Major (rtd) Daniel Sowah Ablorh-Quarcoo, Commissioner of IRS explained to B&FT in Accra that the completion of the automation exercise expected to be completed within the next 18 months will enhance tax administration, and improve compliance.

“With the completion of the automation system, it will help IRS expand the tax net to reach more people and will also improve efficiency in tax administration and enhance transparency,” he said.

The automation forms part of the e-government project is aimed at extending the national backbone infrastructure to all districts in the country, and provide a national data centre and a secondary data centre facility for disaster recovery capability.

It is also to connect all public institutions and Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and Municipal, Metropolitan and District and Assemblies (MMDAs) to a single shared communications and computing infrastructure to facilitate the effective delivery of government services to citizens and businesses amongst others.

The e-government project will computerise the major business processes of registration, assessment, collection and accounts and will also network the Greater Accra on Wide Area Network.

The automated regime will improve access to information, release staff from desk-work to increase field audit capacity, increase in-house communication, and tax client, eliminate duplication and offer transparency.

It will as well improve data availability for efficient revenue forecast, impose standards across the service, intensify and make taxpayer education easy and accessible.

Tax experts have opined that the national revenue agency has failed to achieve success in its revenue mobilisation efforts due to its manual system of operation.

Official figures show that as at 2009, there were 226,760 self –employed registered in the informal sector, but only 53,352 were registered with the IRS and are being assessed to tax.