A Senior Tax expert and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Ghana School of Law, Dr. Abdallah Ali-Nakyea has encouraged revenue administrators and tax collectors to fully embrace technology and digitization in order to attract more tax-payers to pay their taxes.
Speaking at a conference organized to keep Internal Auditors, Covered Entities and stakeholders abreast with the contemporary developments in the practice of Public Sector Internal Auditing (PSIA), Dr Ali-Nakyea said a lot of people in the tax paying bracket will be willing to pay their taxes if more digital platforms were available rather than going to a tax office to do so.
“If you have an app, just like Jumia and Glovo, on which tax-payers can conveniently make payments as compared to walking to the GRA office to file their tax returns, people would be more opened to doing so. That is what the GRA has recently put into practice through the GRA portal.”
The 3-day session was organized by the Internal Audit Agency (IAA) as part of its Annual Internal Audit Conference, on the theme; Injecting Fiscal Discipline in Resource Mobilization and Utilization for Sustainable Development: The Role of Internal Auditors.
Dr. Ali-Nakyea presentation themed ‘Optimizing State Revenue through Digitalization for National Development; the Role of Stakeholders’ touched on the importance of digitalization in mobilizing revenue.
“In recent times everyone across the world is going digital in every area of their lives as well as professionally. The COVID-19 pandemic gave us the unique opportunity for this evolution to come into full existence, making us stay connected in real time, while working virtually. Therefore, if the whole world is moving in this direction, as internal auditors we should be able to put in place policies and measures to mobilize the needed revenue from these virtual businesses and transactions as well as businesses operating in virtual and physical spaces,” he said.
In line with this changing environment, it is important that policies and measures are put in place to address the country’s revenue mobilization issues, as well as focus on optimizing revenue collection and expenditure for long term economic growth.
He argued that digitalization provides a win-win situation for tax administrators and taxpayers, while widening the tax bracket.
“Digitalizing the tax mobilization process increases motivation for administrators in their work, with the submission of information which informed the analysis and decision-making processes of the economic trend, making them more productive in their operations as well as spending, while on the other hand taxpayers are exposed to simplified and varied number of taxpayer services leaving them more satisfied with their overall experience as well as preventing tax errors due to automation.