The Commissioner General of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Reverend Dr. Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah, has said that all is set for the launch of a common platform for the collection of property taxes in Ghana.
According to him, the platform which is to centralize the collection of property tax rates with the GRA will be fully operational by the end of March.
“In terms of all the works that need to be done have been done and we’re expecting that the full – in fact we started some announcement in the papers – we’re expecting that a full takeover will be from the end of this month, I mean, this month going the full implementation,” he said.
So far, “what we have done is that there are a number of properties that we have already raised their assessment, we have introduced a common platform that is a system that allows you to be able to populate all the properties in there.”
According to the GRA, this will take the collection of property rates out of the hands of the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Authorities.
The platform will also ensure that only 30% of property rates collected by the service provider through the common platform will be remitted to the assemblies while the other 70% will be shared among the Ghana Revenue Authority, the Finance Ministry, and the service provider.
According to the GRA boss, when the platform becomes fully functional, property owners are encouraged to update their records with any additional properties they may have, “and then within that system, we are able to generate your rates applicable to your property.”
He continued, “You know the rates differ from area to area, that is municipality to municipality and then we’ll be able to advise the property owners of their rate. At the same time, we’re also encouraging once the platform is ready, we’re encouraging property owners to also go in if even your applicable rate has not been generated yet, you can still even pay in advance if you so desire, and then when the rates are updated you’ll be able to get the right figure for your property rate.
“So, the end of March is the effective date…and we’re expecting that everybody will be on board and it will be for the whole year. So we’re expecting that any payments that anybody will have to do on property rates this year must be done on the platform,” he added.
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Commissioner General of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Reverend Dr. Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah