BORDER REVENUE COLLECTION TO BE AUTOMATED (PAGE 28)

A Chief Inspector of taxes at the headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service, Mr Boakye Yiadom, has said that the present system of revenue collection on the borders , ports and entry points in the country is to be automated to remove all forms of malpractices associated with it.
Under the new system, issuance of Income Tax receipts will no more be operational at the port and the banks will issue their receipts on line in place of the present IRS140B system.
Mr Yiadom was addressing representatives of importers, freight forwarders and shipping companies at a forum in Tema on Monday to introduce to them a new system of operation and the integration of one-per cent withholding tax payment at the ports, borders and entry points and channelling it into the GCNet collection system.
He noted that abuses identified in the old system due to high level of manipulation included clearance of goods with fake tax clearance certificates, forged documents and fake tax receipts.
Mr Yiadom explained that the service introduced an administrative directive in 2001 allowing first time importers to pay one per cent on value of goods as tax to correct the situation but it could not eliminate the fraudulent activities at the revenue collecting points.
He said the Service had, as a result, decided to get hooked to the GCNet and the Ghana Customs Monitoring System (GCMS) at all entry points, where the GCNet/GCMS systems operated, in order to run on a system without any human limitations.
Mr Yiadom said the IRS expected to increase further its revenue collection and also enhance its operations by removing human delays and winding processing of clearance documents.
He said under the new system, IRS and CEPS would be partners in removing fraud and facilitate trade, noting that there were many cases of fraud and forgery of tax documents pending at the courts.
Mr Yiadom said the seriousness of the situation had necessitated the introduction of the new system by the service to curb those fraudulent incidents.
Mr Yiadom advised importers to pay up their tax obligations to enable them to be in good standing with the IRS to qualify to be fed into the GCNet system and be updated periodically.
He announced that those who qualified would be exempted from payment of one per cent on the value of goods imported.
Mr Yiadom explained that the criteria used to determine a taxpayer in good standing with the service included being registered with the Service, and regular filing of personal or company tax returns.
He was of the view that for any port to attract vessels and imports in significant quantities, the turnaround time of that port must be low and the Internal Revenue Service was therefore making all efforts to remove all delays at the entry points.
Mr Patrick Danso of the Management of Information Technology Unit of the Internal Revenue Service cautioned importers, freight forwarders and shipping companies to always demand their tax assessments for the year and not wait for them to be sent to them.
This, he felt, would quicken the pace of processes to enable them to know their status.
Many of the freight forwarders and the importers complained about high tax assessment.
The Councillor of the Ghana Institute of Freight forwarders, Mr Carlors Ahenkorah, called on the IRS to categorise the clearing and shipping agents and asses them on their merit.
Mr Ahenkorah urged the IRS to include the GIFF in their future plans to enable them to give inputs that would help in making well informed decisions, because they were the people who worked there directly at the points and knew the problems.