The Ghana Revenue Authority taskforce on Friday seized assorted drinks without tax stamps from some businesses in Accra.
The exercise is in line with the excise duty law, Act 2023, Act 1093, to ensure that products that are required to have the tax stamp are fixed to them before they are sold into the market.
Speaking to the media after the exercise, Mr Kwabena Apau Awua Anto, Head of the GRA Excise Unit, said the policy was introduced to ensure that imported products, like the malt drink and others, have stamps affixed to them to indicate that the taxes on them had been paid.
“It is true that most of the domestic products, like bottled water, all of them, have the stamps, but you can also see that particularly malt drinks, most of them don’t have the stamps, which are mostly the
imported ones.
“And so we want to clear the market of all products that are illicit, that are non-compliant, to make sure that products that come to the country compete with other compliant products with stamps affixed to them,” he said.
He explained that the law mandated the Authority to confiscate products without tax stamps on them.
He said, “If the owners of the products have a genuine reason why the stamps are not on the products, they can write to the Commissioner- General for assistance.”
Mr Anto expressed worry about the influx of these products into the country, saying, “People continue to bring products that are not compliant to the market. We want to stop this,” he said.
He said the exercise would continue and urged retailers to ensure that the tax stamps were on the drinks before buying them.
Mr Joseph Annan, Head of Enforcement, Accra Central Area Office of GRA, said as an enforcement unit, they would ensure that the tax laws were complied with.
“When we expect taxpayers to voluntarily comply with the tax laws and they fail to do so, then obviously enforcement comes in.
“This is important because any tax law without enforcement becomes useless,” he said.
Mr Annan urged retailers and businesses to comply with the tax law to avoid suffering all the interest and penalties that come with non-compliance.
GNA
