GRA Does Not Need Money

THE PUBLISHER is getting convinced that the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) is not in need for money for the government of Ghana.

Any serious institution of state that has been given legal backing to collect revenue but fails to do so, or adopts a very lazy-bench style of collecting the revenue certainly does not need money.

Right from issues of domestic tax, to VAT, it is clear there are too many companies, including foreign owned, that simply are under declaring their domestic tax payments.

That aspect may even sound a bit technical and requires some due diligence in knowing how much revenue is being evaded.

What we are amazed about is the simple matter of the GRA refusing to chase after landlords across the country who are by law required to pay eight percent (8 %) of their annual rent charges as income tax to the Ghana Revenue Authority.

It also makes absolutely no sense that the country continues to complain of not having enough funds to for basic developmental projects when the GRA has failed to go after the eight percent of annual rent charges from landlords.

That amount, when accumulated, would be more than enough to cash to make the country a better place.

From Axim to Paga and from Aflao to Elubo, many landlords continue to fleece tenants by charging all manner of exorbitant rent rates and pocket the entire money into their private pockets without paying a dime to the GRA.

Just as THE PUBLISHER complained recently, but the GRA and the Rent Control Department have closed an eye on this anomaly. Many of such rented places do not even have basic toilet facilities and bathrooms. Yet the rent control has closed an eye on this challenge.

Yet, as we said last time, there are human beings working at the GRA and the Rent Control Department and these right-thinking human beings continue to enjoy salary paid them by the tax payer. Salaries they do not deserve until they do their work properly.

There are many tenants that are compelled to go for huge loans before they can pay their rent advance. If the laws are made to work and the maximum rent advance of six months is what is being charged by landlords, it certainly would bring a huge relief to tenants.

Perhaps the human beings at the Rent Control Department and the GRA are not aware that landlords in Ghana are now charging their rent rates in American Dollars and this has become the latest culture.

In many houses in Ghana, the landlords only collect the rent from hapless tenants when the rooms they are renting have no toilet or bathrooms facilities. Asking or a kitchen would be a luxury demand.

THE PUBLISHER is calling on the GRA and the Rent Control Department to get up and do the right thing. Ghanaians should not continue to be forced against their will to pay rent advance more than the required six months.

And landlords should not be allowed to continue to pocket the eight percent of their annual rent charges which by law, they are to pay to the GRA as income tax,