Commissioner General of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Reverend Dr. Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah, says technology has played a significant role in the company’s tax mobilization efforts.

According to him, due to the introduction of technology into their operations they have managed to ensure efficiency and compliance and have reduced wastage significantly.

Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express, he stated that going forward the Authority will continue to emphasise on technology to improve their services and meet targets.

“I think technology has played a significant role and I will not underplay it at all. And I think that going forward we’ll continue to emphasise on technology,” he said.

He noted that following the introduction of the cashless system, the company has managed to downsize, while reducing situations that may cause employees to engage in corrupt behaviours.

“Because if you look at in the past couple of years, we started with the cashless which actually meant that we had to take out of our offices over 257 tellers and you know when people are collecting cash, I mean, recently you heard this story about issues with Land’s Commission and some tax stamp issues…and so today we don’t collect cash at all in our offices. That ensures that there is efficiency and monitoring,” he said.

He also noted that due to the cashless system, the company no longer has issues with return cheques which used to be a significant dent in their operations prior to 2020.

“Also we had issues of return cheques. People come to our offices, they pay these cheques, you’ll sign it as they have paid their tax, you present the cheque, three days after it’s returned. Now you have to go and look for the tax payer. All these things have been resolved.  And for the past years, if you look at Auditor General’s report on taxes, every report up to 2020 will have an issue about returned cheques. But from 2021 you’ll not have it again. And again if their cheques are returned, it means that revenues are not collected,” he said.

Dr. Owusu-Amoah said taking into consideration how difficult it is for business people to pay taxes, it behoves on the Authority to ensure that the processes of paying tax are easy and convenient.

This he says has been achieved through the online filing system which now allows people file their taxes from the comfort of their homes.

“And then the filing, today people can also file online. Tax paying is not easy, so if you make the tax paying convenient for the tax payer, it makes it a bit easier for the tax payer to also pay,” he said.

“And then in terms of compliance, I always use the example of the vehicles I see driving in the street where they’ve written at the back ‘in case of overspeeding, call this number,’ and I’m wondering how many of these are effective. Because the vehicle is overtaking and speed limit is 80km per hour, if the vehicle is going above 80km per hour how will you be able to notice the telephone number written at the back of the vehicle and be able to call whoever you’re supposed to call.

“But I’ve seen one organization that I travel with them, and the people in this organization will not even do 81km no matter what. And I asked them, ‘why won’t you?’ he says, ‘as soon as I go beyond 80km, I’ll get an alert on my phone, I’ll get an alert that my salary has been deducted. And so because the technology works, and as soon as he goes 81 he gets an alert that he has breached the organisation’s [rules] they obey it. So using technology for compliance is very very important for tax matters rather than trying to depend upon the manual compliance,” he added.