Commissioner General of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Reverend Dr. Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah, says the common platform for the collection of property tax rates in the country will be fully operational by March ending.

The common platform would centralise the collection of property tax rates with the GRA out of the hands of the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Authorities who had failed to effectively collect property tax rates to finance their activities.

According to Governance Watch, the new regime would ensure that only 30% of property rates collected by the service provider through the common platform will be remitted to the assemblies.

The remaining 70% will be shared among the Ghana Revenue Authority, the Finance Ministry and the service provider.

Speaking on the common platform on JoyNews’ Business Edition, Dr. Owusu-Amoah explained that the platform will be in full throttle by the end of the month, and would help introduce efficiency into property rate collection.

“In terms of all the works that needs to be done have been done and we’re expecting that the full – in fact we started some announcement in the papers – we’re expecting that a full takeover will be from the end of this month, I mean, this month going the full implementation,” he said.

So far, “what we have done is that there are a number of properties that we have already raised their assessment, we have introduced a common platform that is a system that allows you to be able to populate all the properties in there.”

He said when the platform is fully functional, property owners are being encouraged to go update their records with any additional properties they may have, “and then within that system we are able to generate your rates applicable to your property.”

He continued, “You know the rates differ from area to area, that is municipality to municipality and then we’ll be able to advise the property owners of their rate. At the same time we’re also encouraging once the platform is ready, we’re encouraging property owners to also go in and if even your applicable rate has not been generated yet, you can still even pay in advance if you so desire, and then when the rates are updated you’ll be able to get the right figure for your property rate.

“So end of March is the effective date…and we’re expecting that everybody will be on board and it will be for the whole year. So we’re expecting that any payments that anybody will have to do on property rates this year must be done on the platform.”