The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) in collaboration with the National Identification Authority (NIA) has set up 14 offices across the country to synchronise the Tax Identification Numbers (TINs) with the Ghana Card, effective Thursday April 1, 2021.

The GRA will set up additional offices by the end of April to allow individuals who could not register for the Ghana Card during the mass registration to do so.

The Authority hoped to finish with the synchronisation process by the end of December 2021 and fully begin to use the Ghana Card for transactions from January 2022.

This follows the President’s announcement during the State-of-the-Nation-Address in Parliament, on Tuesday that, the Ghana Card numbers would be replaced with TIN, and other national card numbers from April 1.

Reverend Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah, Commissioner-General, GRA announced this on Wednesday when he visited the Adabraka Medium Tax Payer Office in Accra to observe their preparedness for the use of the Ghana card Number as TIN, which takes effect from April 1.

Rev Owusu-Amoah explained that the initiative formed part of efforts to identify and rope in more eligible taxpayers, especially those in the informal sector and enable organisations to easily share important data with the Authority.

The NIA had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ghana Revenue Authority, Passport Office, Driver Vehicle and Licensing Authority (DVLA) and Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), to synchronise their biometric cards with the Ghana-Card electronic database system.

Data from the GRA indicates that the informal sector constitutes about 70 percent of the economy but just two percent pay income tax.

He said the GRA, had employed data scientists to analyse the transactions of High-Net-Worth Individuals– persons with around $1 million in liquid financial assets to ensure that they were paying the right taxes to government.

The GRA, the Commissioner-General, stressed had configured and synchronised its data with 14 other government institutions, including the DVLA and the SSNIT to enable them achieve the target.

GRA has set a revenue target of 60 billion Ghana Cedi by the end of 2021.

The use of Ghana-Card numbers as tax identification numbers is expected to increase the number of taxpayers from three million to 15.5 million.