Accra, March 19, GNA - The Value Added Tax (VAT) Service is to adopt a software that would help monitor revenue generated by the Communication Service Tax (CST) popularly known as the "Talk Tax". Mr. Harry Owusu, Executive Secretary of the Revenue Agencies Governing Board, who made this known, said this was crucial to enable the VAT to meet its projected revenue targets of the CST. He said the software would therefore provide VAT the means to either confirm or debunk any false returns made by their agents during their submissions.

Mr Owusu said this at the opening of a two-day retreat organised for management and other key personnel of the Service to discuss strategies to improve the tax administration in the country. The workshop is under the theme: "Strategic Positioning of the VAT Service for Effective and Efficient tax Collection for a Better Ghana".

Mr Owusu said although the CST had bagged 47.03 million Ghana cedis for government since its inception in June last year, the figure was 15 per cent below target.

He expressed the hope that with the software, the Service would be able to fully monitoring its agents and expand operations to cover other service providers who qualified to collect the CST. Mr Owusu commended the staff for achieving their revenue targets last year and urged them to again work hard to achieve this year's target of 855.35 million Ghana cedis. Mr Anthony Ewereko Minlah, Commissioner of the VAT Service, urged the staff to work hard to exceed its revenue target of 45 per cent this year.

He said the current global financial and economic crisis called for more efforts to generate more internal revenue; hence the need for tax authorities to increase their tax yield. The Commissioner called for frank discussions form the participants to help maximize revenue, bearing in mind government's intentions to review the tax administration system in the country. Mr Seth Terkper, Deputy Minister of Finance, called on the staff to redouble their efforts to help implement effective tax regimes for the country.

He also asked the staff to reflect on the need to promote integration among all revenue agencies, the proposed National Revenue Authority and how the National Identification exercise could help improve tax identification systems in the country. He expressed government's commitment to support revenue agencies to generate the needed resources for development.