As part of supporting government in revenue mobilization, the Ghana Community Network (GCNet), has paid an amount of GHS8 million as final dividends to the government.
This brings total dividend payment for 2017 to GHS 17 million, following an earlier payment of GHS 9 million in the year.
However, the dividend for 2017 fell short of 2016 payment at a total of GHS 18 million.
Explaining this, the Executive Chairman of GCNet, Dr. Nortey Omaboe said the shortfall in 2017 was generally due to higher operational cost in the deployment of numerous systems, especially the TRIPS system to outlying offices.”
“Currently, we have deployed the system to 65 Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) offices and with the exception of Weija, we are hoping that in the next month the total deployment would be complete.”
There was acceleration in the deployment process during the course of the year, which Dr. Omaboe said accounted for the increases in the cost.
He recounted that the year in which the company fell short of the high dividend was in 2013 and 2014; when the company had to invest extremely heavily in the TRIPS deployment project.
Dr. Omaboe revealed that in November last year; GCNet recorded the highest tax identification number (TIN) registration in the history of the country, where one million TIN were registered.
He said about a month ago, the figure increased by 50 percent to about 1.5 million.
“We anticipate that it would increase further as the government has now come out with some clear guidelines on what services one can use with or without a TIN.”
The TIN is an eleven digit identification of taxpayers to ensure tax compliance. The GRA believes the unique ID numbers will allow proper monitoring and also broaden the tax net to cater for those formally outside the tax net.
It was expected that, from April 1, 2018, a person cannot open a bank account, file a case in court, acquire a passport or obtain a driving license without the TIN.