Domestic Tax

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GRA⋅Domestic Tax

Domestic Tax

Domestic taxes are taxes chargeable on profits or gains under the laws of the country in which an entity is established or a person is a resident. Domestic Taxes are classified under Direct and Indirect Taxes. Direct Tax is intended to be paid by the person or the organization on whom/which the tax is actually levied, the impact and incidence being on the same person or organisation. eg. Income Tax, Capital Gains Tax and Gift Tax. Indirect Tax, however, is levied on one person with the expectation that the tax will be shifted or passed on to another. The impact and incidence here, are on different persons. eg. Value Added Tax.

With the transformation of the internal structures of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), The Operational Division was created for revenue mobilization and it is made up of the Domestic Tax Revenue Division (DTRD) and the Customs Division (CD).

Domestic Tax

The DTRD was formed to be responsible for the administration and collection of domestic direct and indirect taxes which were being administered by the previous Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Value Added Tax Service (VAT) respectively. The benefit of this merger to taxpayers was that it made it easier for them to comply as they only had to deal with one tax office for all their tax related issues; and to the GRA, it made it more effective and enabled it continually have a holistic view of its taxpayers.

The primary function of the division is to identify all taxpayers, assess them and collect the relevant taxes and levies based on the various tax types. Then after, all collected amounts are paid into the Consolidated Fund. View all Tax Types Here

Since the main focus of the DTRD is to maximise revenue and improve customer service delivery, the Division is structured along functional lines far from the former tax type administration.

To do this efficiently, taxpayers are segmented and targeted specifically.

Domestic taxpayers are segmented into:

Large Taxpayers

These are large organisations and businesses with an annual turnover exceeding GH₵5 million. Banks, Insurance and Oil & Gas companies are also automatically classified as Large Taxpayers, regardless of their turnover. This segmentation is managed by the Large Taxpayer Office (LTO).

Small/Medium Taxpayers

These are individuals or organisations with annual turnovers below GH₵5 million. They are managed by Taxpayer Service Centres (TSCs). Previously,they were split into two separate tax offices namely, the Small Taxpayer Office (STO) and Medium Taxpayer Office (MTO)

Each segmented or operational office has three main functions:

The Taxpayer Services Unit
Compliance, Enforcement and Debt Management Unit and
The Audit Unit

There is also the Policy and Programs (P&P) Department which is responsible for the preparation of all procedures, practice notes, forms, manuals etc. for operations.

The division is led by the Commissioner, DTRD with support from other Deputy Commissioners.