Vehicles sold without Customs clearance attract 300% penalty

A vehicle sold without proper clearance by the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) attracts the maximum penalty of 300 per cent of its price.

According to the Chief Revenue Officer - Custom’s Tema Collection, Mr Theophilus Okine the Customs law enjoins that the maximum of the 300 per cent of the vehicle price could be imposed on the perpetrator at the prerogative of the Director-General of Custom.

Mr Okine was speaking on the sidelines of a day’s workshop to sensitize taxpayers from Spintex, Teshie, Nungua, Tema, Ashaiman and its environs on the GRA’s amended Value Added Tax (VAT), National Health Insurance Levy (NHIL) and the Ghana Educational Trust Fund acts.

He noted that persons who shipped vehicles into Ghana under the temporal importation regime but sold to unsuspecting people without paying the required Customs taxes would also not be spared.

He explained that such vehicles were allowed into the country after paying a fee at the borders and being granted a Temporal Vehicle Importation (TVI) status which allowed owners of such vehicles to use it for a maximum of three months in Ghana.

He added that even though particulars of such vehicles are taken and entered into the Customs system at the point of entry, some went to the extent of tampering with the chassis number making it difficult for it to be traced to the numbers entered into the system at the borders.

Mr Okine admitted that such activities of vehicle owners made it difficult for such vehicles to be monitored adding that some also entered through unapproved routes making it impossible to have their particulars in the system.

He added that since people were ignorant about the fact that such vehicles must not be disposed of until they are cleared by Customs, his outfit often carried out snap checks to impound such vehicles in the system.

He also advised prospective vehicle buyers to always check the status of vehicles they want to buy at any Customs office to avoid offending the law.