Aftermath of the Supreme Court's order to GRA: A look at E-levy deductions, accountability

On Thursday, May 4, 2022, a seven-member panel of the Supreme Court presided over by Justice Nene Amegatcher made a stern order to the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to keep accurate records of the E-Levy funds deducted for possible mass refund should the substantive E-levy case succeed.

This order was made as part of its ruling in an injunction application filed by the Minority leader in Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu, and 2 others who sought to halt the implementation of the Levy by the Authority.

The applicants, per their affidavit in support of the application, noted that an  “irreparable harm would be occasioned to the millions of Ghanaians and all other persons in Ghana on the basis that if the Honourable Court nullifies the passage of the Electronic Transfer Levy Act, 2022(Act 1075), the Government of Ghana would not be in the position to reimburse all the money paid by the millions of citizens of Ghana and all other persons.”

However, the Supreme Court dismissed the same noting that greater hardship will be on the state should the application be granted because the Ghana Revenue Authority will be able to reimburse funds if the substantive case succeeds but will not be able to recover the levy if otherwise and duly ordered supra the Ghana Revenue Authority.

We take a closer look at the E-Levy Implementation so far and what the Ghana Revenue Authority is doing in keeping with the apex court’s order.

According to the Administrative Guidelines on the Levy issued by the Ghana Revenue Authority on April 27, 2022;

There are instances where the deducted levy will be required to be reversed or refunded. These instances include;

• Errors in transferring money to a wrong account/wallet
• Wrongful charge by the charging entity
• Unavailability of GRA E-levy Assessment Programming Interface(API)
• Charging Entity’s inability to connect to the GRA E-Levy Assessment Application Programming Interface(API).

It adds that such reversals will occur when the erroneously deducted Levy is still in the possession of the Charging Entity. In contrast, refunds will occur when the erroneously deducted Levy has been paid into the Consolidated Fund.

Additionally, the document tasks the Charging Entity to remit the total amount of the Levy collected each day into the consolidated Fund at GMT 00:00 of the next day.

Moreover, the Charging Entity is required to furnish GRA with the details of the Levy in a form prescribed by the Commissioner-General by the last working day following the month in which the information relates.

Also, there is a portion of the post Transfer Audit System to be implemented by the GRA in order to have complete visibility over all applicable electronic transfers and allow the generation of accurate and relevant revenue assessment reports.

In an interview with citinews on May 5, 2022, a member of the GRA E-Levy Technical Team, Patrick Frimpong-Danso disclosed that the Authority has given all Charging Entities a template that enables them to report to the Authority all their daily transactions. 

He added that the transactions are segmented into modules thus the total value of the E-Levy charged by a charging entity( on-net and off-net) and those that apply to entities like the banks.

Further to the above, Mr. Frimpong-Danso indicated that his outfit has requested for date relative to reversals in order to arm it in the event of it being demanded by the Supreme Court.