Let’s collaborate for revenue growth — New GRA boss urges tax administrators
THE Acting Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Anthony Sarpong, has urged African tax administrators to capitalise on available opportunities for knowledge sharing and collaboration on best practices that can help improve revenue mobilisation.
He explained that by sharing experiences and expertise, tax authorities could develop innovative strategies to address common challenges, optimise revenue collection, and promote economic growth.
“Now more than ever, tax administrators need to leverage on every opportunity we have to share ideas on best industry practice to improve on our work of revenue mobilisation,” Mr Sarpong said at the opening of a three-day (January 29 to 31) workshop on Thursday, January 29 in Accra.
The workshop
Organised by the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF), the 2024 African Tax Outlook Validation Workshop seeks to validate the draft 2024 African Tax Outlook report and gather feedback from stakeholders.
On the theme: “Timely publication of the ATO and its impact on tax administrations,” the workshop brought together heads of research of African tax administrations and other ATO focal points participating in the African Tax Outlook project to deliberate on the draft report, share experiences and explore strategies for enhancing the timeliness and relevance of tax data in Africa.
The meeting, among other things, is to ensure that ATO dashboards have been updated, preliminary analysis of the 2024 ATO edition is presented and validated by participating members and there’s feedback on descriptive statistics and storyline.
The publication
The ATAF’s African Tax Outlook Publication arose from the necessity to make available reliable tax statistics and analyses pertaining to African tax administrations, with a view to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of member country taxation.
Reliable information source
Mr Sarpong explained that it was crucial for stakeholders to meet every year to receive inputs and ideas to shape the publication and make it one of the best in the world.
He said the ATO publication was extremely important because it provided reliable tax-related information for international financial institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), tax administrations, tax policy makers, tax practitioners and academia.
“It is against this background that we in GRA will expect the ATO to be published in a timely manner and in line with the theme of the workshop. Timely publication of the ATO will help achieve its objectives better,” he said.
He said the importance of this publication could not be overstated as it would serve as a platform to compare tax indicators of the various participating countries such as tax rates, tax bases, tax structure, revenue performance, tax administration, taxpayer service and compliance.
“These indicators help countries work harder in order to improve on tax revenue mobilisation. The indicators are also crucial to African revenue authorities as they implement reforms and policies to broaden the tax base, narrow tax gaps, simplify and improve fairness in tax systems, enhance overall voluntary compliance and keep policy makers informed on tax matters,” he added.
Participating countries
The Manager of ATAF, Frank Mbuyamba, stated that the ATO publication assesses and compares participating countries against indicators in various categories such as tax rates, tax bases, tax structure, revenue performance, tax administration, taxpayer service and compliance.
He said those indicators were crucial to African tax authorities as they implement reforms and policies to broaden the tax base, narrow tax gaps, simplify and improve fairness in tax systems, enhance overall voluntary compliance and keep policy makers informed on tax matters.