IRS introduces income tax software for taxpayers Ghana News Agency , 20/11/2009
The Internal
Revenue Service (IRS), has introduced am income tax software to
assist taxpayers to properly file correct monthly income tax returns,
Mr James Kwaku Nyantakyi, the acting Western Regional Director of the Service on Thursday
announced.
He was speaking at a one-day workshop on the
application of the software, which was dubbed: "IRS Tax Helper" for
representatives of medium and small enterprises at Takoradi.
Mr Nyantakyi said the
software was developed because returns submitted by taxpayers were often
wrongly calculated as a result of the use of wrong tax rates and totals were
inaccurate.
He said some taxpayers had
difficulty in completing income tax returns forms and this caused delays in the
filing of returns.
Mr Nyantakyi said on the
whole, the software would enhance efficiency in their business processes to
enable them pay a fair and equitable tax for the development of the country.
He said it would enhance
revenue administration through Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
when the IRS was integrated into the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) as was
announced in the 2010 budget.
He said the software would
also help tax administrators to control the processes and machinery in
optimizing revenue from the income tax, increase quality of service to
taxpayers by reducing the time of processing the returns and help businesses to
file returns on time to avoid penalties for late submission and payment of
taxes.
Mr Nyantakyi said the
software had been developed with support from development partners as part of
the Public Sector Development Strategy (PSDS) and launched
by the government to provide support to IRS and other public institutions to
achieve sustainable and widespread private sector led growth throughout the
country.
Eighteen government
Ministries, Departments and Agencies which activities impact on the growth of
the private sector have been identified to use the software, support them to
implement favourable investment reforms and to enable them to provide more
efficient services to the private sector.