Govt bags Gh¢5 million from talk tax

Page 34, September 4/2008

Story: Charles Benoni Okine

THE government has bagged GH¢5 million from the collection of the Communications Service Tax (CST) for the month of July this year.
The amount represents an increase of GH¢1million over the previous month, but the Revenue Agencies Governing Board (RAGB) says it is not satisfied with the declarations.
To achieve full recovery, the governing board has ordered a device that will help it to independently track all outgoing and incoming calls and other chargeable communications services provided by all the players in the industry.
The move, according to the board, is to ensure that the service providers declare in full to the Value Added Tax (VAT) service, the value of their revenue to enable the service charge the appropriate tax to the state.
Although the Executive Director of the board, Mr Harry Owusu, who disclosed this to the Daily Graphic in Accra yesterday, said he would not say that the players were not declaring their revenues fully for the deduction of appropriate taxes, but added that there were indications that there were serious underdeclarations as far as payment of the tax was concerned.
The players are by law expected to charge six per cent on the service they provide at a particular time to the customers on behalf of the state.
The government, by a Legislative Instrument, introduced the CST at the beginning of the second quarter of the year and abolished the import taxes on mobile phones.
Mr Owusu said some of the players had not yet honoured their obligations to the state as far as the payment of the CST was concerned, but refused to mention their names.
“It is not yet ripe for us to mention names, but we are keeping a close watch on the players to ensure that they complied fully with the law”, he said.