The Ashanti Regional office of the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) last Thursday closed six hospitality facilities in the region for the non-payment of the Tourism Levy contrary to Legislative Instrument (LI) 2185.
It was part of a bigger exercise to clamp down on facilities that had defaulted in the payment of the Tourism Levy.
About 20 facilities in the region owed the GTA over GH¢200,000 in levies they collected on its behalf.
One of them owed GH¢29,338, the highest of the debts by a single company, for a period dating back to 2011.
The amount owed were for the period up to June 2022.
Exercise
Briefing the press, the Ashanti Regional Manager of the GTA, Frederick Kyei-Rudolph, said most of the facilities had refused to remit the authority with the levies.
He said all the facilities were given reminders but failed to heed to the request, and that the level of compliance with the payment of the levy in the region was not very encouraging.
He said although the authority had licenced more than 700 hospitality facilities in the region to charge the levy, “we get about half of them regularly paying the levy on monthly basis”.
He explained that the levy was not a tax charged on the facilities, but a levy paid by consumers, and expressed worry about how the facilities kept defaulting in the payment of the receipts they made to the authority.
Mr Kyei-Rudolph said the owner of one of the facilities was a recalcitrant client who kept operating even though closure notices had been pasted on the doors of the facility.
In all, six facilities out of the eight visited were closed down, with the other two making undertakings to pay their debt within two weeks after making part payment before the visit of the team.
The Authority has earmarked 20 faculties in the region for the exercise which is expected to last for two days.
Source: Graphic online
