He made this known during a media engagement session organised to enlighten the media and stakeholders on its initiatives at the Alisa Hotel on Tuesday, 11th September 2018.

In his Speech, the Commissioner-General said their new initiatives are geared towards improvement in performances to achieve a significant revenue uplift over the next two years. "In essence, the initiatives are about my vision as Commissioner-General for the GRA in the two years ahead".

He made mention of  these initiatives as implementation of the excise stamp from 1st January, 2018, a restructuring of the VAT with a delinking of the National Health Insurance Levy (NHIL) and the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) levy from VAT as enacted in the law. Other initiatives include the Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), The Cargo Tracking Number (CTN)  and the creation of an additional personal income tax band.

Mr Nti made it known that the revenue performance statistics as at August 31st 2018 was a target of GHC 24,460.29m as against a collection of 22,656.69m and a deviation of -1,803.59m (7.4 per cent). In the same period, Customs he said registered a negative deviation of GHC1,700.82mn or -18.4 per cent while that for DTRD had an overall negative deviation of GHC83.79 or -0.59 per cent.

He said that this negative picture must be reversed in the months ahead adding that "we are aiming at a better performance than this. It's here that our new initiatives come in".

He said that the McKenzie Group will help improve on professionalism and change the management process in GRA which he termed as PROJECT G.R.E.A.T- Ghana Revenue Enhancement and Transformation. He said the organisation has done some work in Angola and Nigeria with a majority of their staff as Ghanaians in the Diaspora.

He appealed to the media to help advocate for the collection of taxes adding that the GRA will go after tax evaders with a full application of tax laws. "The GRA will now embark on naming and shaming with imposition and application of sanctions including persecutions and distress actions" he said.

In engaging with the media, the commissioner general said that  technology is a key component of GRAs work. He said as a country, the nature of our economy has changed. The service sector now contributes more than 50 per cent of the GDP which includes the technology sector. He said technological initiatives such as the  paperless system, will facilitate trade as well at the Total Revenue Indicator Processing System (TRIPS) which captures data at the  domestic revenue level. 

He  that said one area that they are lacking in now is Value Added Tax (VAT) adding that , the Electronic Point of Sale  Mechanism (EPOS) has been introduced to ensure proper accounting for goods and services and urged Ghanaians not to purchase goods without the tax stamp.

He said the use of McKenzie's services is to compliment the work of the GRA in revenue mobilisation. "The work we are doing together is not abstract and we are learning new ways of doing things, there is room for compensations when targets are exceeded" he stated.

He also addressed the work of the GRA with the Nation Builders Corps (NABCO) Programme in revenue and rent collection as well as extending operations to  artisans to widen tax payments. The TIN registrations, he said, are all ways of reaching out to the informal sector for the payment of tax.

Commissioner for Customs, Mr. Isaac Crentsil said work is being done to ensure the payment of rent and encouraged support from the media and cooperation from Ghanaians to help in mobilising revenue. He added that commercial rent payers  are compliant with payment of withholding tax, the problem he said is with residential owners.

He said collaboration is being done with Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) on various properties in Ghana to identify which ones are being rented to tackle the issue of non payment of rent tax.

Mr Crentsil also said the CTN payment will not increase the cost of doing business and at the piloting stage, the GRA will take care of the numbers that will arise. He said "we expect that documentations will have the CTN number to allow for easy auditing, look at risk factors when doing risk assessments such as checking for fake goods and where the goods are coming from. We will also go after multi nationals that are evading taxes through the use of CTN".

Mr Kofi Nti again commented on the payment of taxes by churches saying that specific churches were mentioned for exemptions from payment of taxes taking into consideration churches engaged in business activities.

Present at the media engagement were other Commissioners of the Ghana Revenue Authority, staff, stakeholders and the media.