The Ghana Revenue Authority, GRA has commenced processes to enable it to impose taxes on businesses that sell products and services on the internet including Facebook.
However, with the nature of the cyberspace, some analysts have cast doubt about the GRA’s ability to monitor and tax online businesses.
But the GRA says it is currently drafting modalities to enable it to tax online businesses. Edward Gyamerah, a Deputy Commissioner at the Large Tax Payer Office at the GRA said, “Currently, we have a project team that is looking at how to tax the digital economy. The project team is working on developing modalities. We hope that they will come out with their draft for us to share with stakeholders.â€
Millions of commercial transactions take place on the internet every day. Hundreds of businesses operating on the internet have virtually no boundary or monitored to ascertain the volume or value of those transactions.
GRA must move to make online businesses tax compliance - Tax expert
Tax expert Abdallah Ali-Nakyea has asked the Ghana Revenue Authority, GRA to take steps in identifying online businesses and make them tax compliance.
According to him, majority of businesses are online now and the country can make a great fortune in term of revenue if these businesses are made to pay tax.
Speaking at the forum organised by the Insitute of Chartered Accountant Ghana, Abdallah Ali-Nakyea said the e-commerce sector has expanded and the country needs to take advantage of that for resource mobilisation.
"...is where every business is heading towards, everything is being done online so it wider and bigger than the e-commerce we use to know so it high time the revenue collectors try to look at that sector and you know it's not only about taxation but they can also assist them in whatever help they need to keep records then they can also comply with the tax laws, it will have a significant impact because if you look at the volume of digital economy that trades today and when you look at what it can translate into in terms of tax revenue for direct and indirect tax then it can boost domestic resource mobilisation and also towards our movement for Ghana Beyond Aid."
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