Assistant Commissioner of the VAT Administration of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Philip Acquah is hopeful the GRA could increase its revenue after the full implementation of its new electronic VAT system.

The new electronic VAT invoice which is currently being implemented will allow GRA to connect the invoicing system of the Commissioner-General to taxpayers and businesses.

This gives the GRA the chance to monitor invoices by taxpayers instantly or near real price so that the Commissioner-General knows every single invoice that is being issued by taxpayers.

Speaking in an interview with JoyNews, Mr. Philip Acquah noted that every country where this new system has been implemented has significantly increased its tax revenue.

He explained that the GRA is similarly expecting to have its tax revenue increased once the full implementation is done.

“If you look at the history of implementation of electronic invoicing globally, a lot of countries that implemented them have seen a significant jump in their tax revenue and that is exactly what we expect to see with the advent of this system…there is no doubt we just started implementing the system not long ago,” he said.

According to Mr. Acquah, the new e-invoicing system has been designed to do away with the challenges which accompanied the manual invoicing system such as under-declaration of taxes by taxpayers and non-filing of returns.

“That has been the norm. We know that a lot of them are either not filing the appropriate returns that they are supposed to file and pay the due taxes or if they file, they basically file no returns and it is extremely difficult to follow up on every single taxpayer who either file no returns or has stopped filing completely.

“This time, GRA or the Commissioner-General will know if the taxpayer is conducting business in any particular manner so there is no way to hide,” he added.

The new system, he said started in March and is being implemented in various stages. He indicated that the GRA had already earmarked some taxpayers for the first phase and will sanction them accordingly if they ignore to onboard unto the new system.

“We are monitoring the process of the onboarders and any taxpayer who refuses to onboard based on the timelines that we shared with them, will be sanctioned appropriately so there are still more to come based on the responses we receive from the first stage of implementation,” he stated.

Mr. Acquah added that the GRA had since March educated all taxpayers who are part of the first phase of implementation and assigned relationship managers to each one of them to assist in their registering onto the system.

Already, the Authority has shut down major trading franchises including; the China Mall, Palace Mall and the Regal Chinese Restaurant in Osu for failing to enlist unto its new system.