Ghana is planning to introduce additional measures to tighten tax collecting.

According to a Bloomberg report, the West African nation’s revenue authority will institute rules this month compelling individuals and businesses to get a tax registration number. The tax number will now be compulsory for opening any bank account and obtaining a driver’s licence or passport.

The introduction of the number ‘will solve the one single, major problem that debilitated efforts to broaden the tax base and increase collections’, according to senior lecturer in finance at the University of Ghana, Lord Mensah. ‘We live in a country where we have identification problems and it has been affecting our revenue collection,’ he said.

More than two-thirds of businesses in Ghana are in the informal sector and will now be brought into the tax collection net.

The country collected GHS27.4 billion in taxes in the first 11 months of last year, compared to its target of GHS29.4 billion cedis.

17 April 2018
Image: Alamy