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MSL Business SchoolRevenue policy architecture
Ghana Medium-Term Revenue Strategy 2024-2027
The Government's four-year plan for moving from annual revenue measures towards a coordinated programme of tax policy, non-tax revenue, administration, legislation, digitalisation and institutional reform.
Analysed and explained by MSL Business School through TaxLawGH.
Strategy in brief
A coordinated revenue-reform programme, not a schedule of enacted tax changes.
The MTRS operationalises the Ghana National Revenue Policy through 113 policy and administration actions over 2024-2027.
Its stated purpose is to increase domestic revenue for expenditure and debt obligations while improving equity, efficiency, predictability, investment conditions, administration and public confidence.
Additional revenue targets
The strategy sets annual reform contributions relative to GDP.
The tax figures combine planned policy and administration contributions. The non-tax figures are separately stated MTRS reform targets.
Additional tax revenue target
Additional non-tax revenue target
| Year | Tax policy | Tax administration | Total tax | Non-tax revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 1.08% | 0.10% | 1.18% | 0.35% |
| 2025 | 1.49% | 0.50% | 1.99% | 0.60% |
| 2026 | 0.90% | 0.30% | 1.20% | 0.45% |
| 2027 | 0.61% | 0.19% | 0.80% | 0.40% |
Policy architecture
Eleven themes organise 60 policy reforms.
Direct taxes
Simplified taxation, withholding, rents, rates, digital services and other income-tax reforms.
Indirect taxes
VAT design, exemptions, associated levies, excise structure and consumption-tax reform.
Trade and facilitation
Tariff costs, classifications, valuation, suspense regimes and ICUMS roll-out.
Domestic capacity
Anchor industries, local entrepreneurship, imports, local content and exports.
International taxation
Transfer pricing, country-by-country reporting, treaty networks and global tax developments.
Tax expenditure
Location incentives, regulations, annual publication, temporary concessions and rationalisation.
Extractive industries
A consolidated fiscal regime for upstream mining and petroleum operations.
Environmental fiscal reform
Forestry, plastics, emissions and fisheries-related fiscal measures.
Non-tax revenue
Strategy, fees, public assets, institutional design and property rates.
Revenue administration
A national revenue-administration reform policy.
Digitalisation
A digitalisation master plan for revenue policy and administration.
Complete policy-action index
All 60 policy actions, organised by the strategy's themes.
The wording below is a concise TaxLawGH restatement of the action matrix. It records what the strategy proposed; it does not label a measure as enacted, commenced or still current.
Direct taxes - 12 actions
- Introduce a simplified modified taxation scheme for small taxpayers.
- Introduce a minimum chargeable income rule.
- Require an authorised VAT invoice as evidence for deducting an expense for income-tax purposes.
- Review the Stamp Duty Act.
- Tax gross gaming revenue and apply withholding tax to gaming winnings.
- Improve the taxation of rent income.
- Tighten debt-to-equity safeguards against excessive interest deductions.
- Improve withholding-tax management and administration.
- Review concessionary corporate income-tax rates.
- Review the progressive personal income-tax structure.
- Redesign the Electronic Transfer Levy.
- Develop income-tax rules for cross-border digital services.
Indirect taxes - 12 actions
- Align excise rates for products with similar characteristics.
- Align Customs tariff reliefs with the VAT Act.
- Review the VAT registration threshold.
- Review VAT exemptions for residential property.
- Review VAT-associated levies and their input-deductibility treatment.
- Review VAT exemptions for efficiency and distortion effects.
- Review the Communications Service Tax rate.
- Harmonise tobacco excise with relevant WHO and ECOWAS frameworks.
- Use a hybrid ad valorem and specific excise structure for spirits, wine, sugar-sweetened beverages and beer, with inflation adjustment.
- Extend excise to cosmetics, weapons and ammunition.
- Develop automatic adjustment formulas for the Special Petroleum Tax, energy-sector levies and excise duties.
- Shift the tax mix from wage-based taxes towards consumption taxes.
Trade and facilitation - 5 actions
- Review and consolidate tariff lines that create high input costs.
- Review import duties on vehicle spare parts.
- Strengthen classification and valuation integrity through the Customs Technical Services Bureau.
- Improve supervision of Customs suspense regimes.
- Complete and deepen the implementation of ICUMS.
Domestic productive capacity - 5 actions
- Review incentives for anchor industries and local entrepreneurs.
- Reduce dependence on imported essential products.
- Improve productive links between small and large businesses.
- Set minimum local-content, employment and supply expectations for industries.
- Strengthen export-development initiatives.
International taxation - 6 actions
- Adapt transfer-pricing rules and risk-based audits for small and medium-sized enterprises.
- Strengthen the connection between Customs valuation and income-tax transfer pricing.
- Operationalise country-by-country reporting through the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement.
- Expand Ghana's regional treaty network in support of AfCFTA and ECOWAS trade.
- Develop domestic systems for the OECD two-pillar international tax reforms.
- Adopt a whole-of-government approach to international tax crime and illicit financial flows.
Tax expenditure - 5 actions
- Redefine geographic-location concessions.
- Develop regulations for the exemptions framework.
- Publish tax-expenditure estimates annually and improve the supporting database and costing.
- Review temporary concessions for employing recent graduates.
- Rationalise tax expenditures regularly.
Extractive industries - 1 action
- Develop a coherent fiscal regime for upstream mining and petroleum operations, including the fiscal terms of agreements.
Environmental fiscal reform - 6 actions
- Review stumpage fees and timber-right charges, including a minimum five-per-cent charge.
- Review taxes and levies on timber exports.
- Use premium levies for endangered timber species.
- Expand taxation of plastic products and packaging.
- Introduce an emissions tax.
- Review trawler fees under the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement.
Non-tax revenue - 6 actions
- Develop a national non-tax-revenue strategy.
- Review fees regularly and move services with private-good characteristics towards full cost recovery.
- Clarify the roles of covered and state-owned entities in non-tax-revenue mobilisation.
- Modernise covered and state-owned entities.
- Develop a policy for public assets.
- Review the property-rate system.
Revenue administration - 1 action
- Develop a national revenue-administration reform policy.
Digitalisation - 1 action
- Develop a digitalisation master plan for revenue policy and administration.
Complete administration-action index
All 53 administration and support actions.
These measures address the institutional machinery needed to design, collect, report and enforce revenue. They are analytically separate from the 60 policy actions.
Tax policy administration - 12 actions
- Run public sensitisation on revenue policy.
- Prepare an organisational-development and skills report.
- Implement recommendations for the tax-policy-making process.
- Develop standard operating procedures for the Revenue Policy Division.
- Provide the technology and systems needed for policy work.
- Build a specialist library and access to online research subscriptions.
- Develop tax-expenditure databases and analytical models.
- Deepen collaboration between revenue policy and fiscal planning.
- Build capacity to translate policy into legislation.
- Strengthen the Independent Tax Appeals Board.
- Develop guidelines for policy challenges and disputes.
- Operationalise the Emissions Fiscal Registry and Green Fund architecture.
Non-tax revenue administration - 12 actions
- Translate national non-tax-revenue objectives into operating plans.
- Set implementation milestones.
- Establish focal desks in relevant institutions.
- Require periodic reporting from public agencies and holders.
- Develop key performance indicators.
- Focus central audit work on non-tax revenue.
- Onboard entities to the Public Investment and Financial Management Information System.
- Strengthen investigations.
- Develop costing and pricing manuals.
- Create databases and standard operating procedures for fees and charges.
- Improve the chart of accounts.
- Expand gross lodgement outside the central bank where appropriate.
Customs administration - 4 actions
- Improve classification and valuation integrity.
- Deepen implementation of the ECOWAS Common External Tariff.
- Strengthen supervision of Customs suspense regimes.
- Improve export procedures and documentation.
Domestic-tax administration - 10 actions
- Reduce the time required to file and pay while strengthening risk-based audits.
- Use the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance, BEPS tools and dispute mechanisms more effectively.
- Establish a specialised audit centre.
- Build transfer-pricing capacity.
- Improve excise administration for outgrower arrangements and supporting guidelines.
- End the VAT Relief Purchase Order system and improve the refund process.
- Review the liquidity effects of VAT withholding.
- Build a system for managing and reporting tax expenditure.
- Strengthen GRA debt management.
- Improve compliance by quasi-government institutions.
Information technology and support - 15 actions
- Improve assistance for informal-sector taxpayers.
- Strengthen client service.
- Expand third-party data use.
- Create a single revenue-reporting system.
- Complete and improve the Integrated Tax Application and Preparation System.
- Implement customer-relationship management.
- Complete relevant ICUMS modules.
- Increase enforcement staffing.
- Provide ICT training.
- Integrate systems and strengthen data analytics and exchange of information.
- Extend electronic non-tax-revenue systems to remote areas.
- Onboard all ministries, departments and agencies, including retained internally generated funds, to GIFMIS.
- Connect government-agency electronic systems in real time.
- Re-engineer business processes.
- Build an e-learning system.
Institutions, timing and accountability
Delivery was designed as a multi-institution programme.
Policy lead
The Revenue Policy Division was to maintain the policy initiative desk, coordinate policy actions and connect proposals to fiscal planning and legislation.
Administration lead
The Ghana Revenue Authority's Transformation Office was assigned a central role in coordinating administration reforms.
Oversight
A Steering Committee, technical structures, working groups and a secretariat were intended to review progress, resolve constraints and maintain annual work plans.
Development-partner coordination
The Public Financial Management Sector Working Group was identified as the channel for coordinating external support and limiting duplication.
The strategy's timing definitions
Follow each reform field
Move from strategy language to TaxLawGH's law and evidence pages.
Strategy-to-law boundary
Planned reform is not enacted law.
Strategy
The MTRS states policy direction, intended timing and anticipated revenue impact.
Design and consultation
Individual measures may require detailed design, stakeholder engagement and administrative preparation.
Legal authority
A Bill, Act, legislative instrument or other lawful instrument must be independently verified before treating a proposal as law.
Operational effect
Commencement, systems, guidance and enforcement can affect when a legally adopted measure actually operates.
Delivery and review design
The strategy anticipated staged implementation and formal review.
The original design called for quarterly reporting, annual work plans, working groups, technical oversight and a secretariat. The later process review says the full planned monitoring cadence could not be maintained.
Primary source
Official strategy published by the Ministry of Finance.
Medium-Term Revenue Strategy (MTRS) 2024-2027
The 52-page strategy was published in September 2023. It sets the objectives, targets, thematic analysis, 60 policy reforms, 53 administration reforms, legal-reform direction and monitoring design.
Frequently asked questions
Ghana's Medium-Term Revenue Strategy
What is Ghana's Medium-Term Revenue Strategy?
It is the Government's 2024-2027 framework for reforming tax and non-tax policy, administration, legislation and supporting systems to increase domestic revenue mobilisation.
What are the headline targets?
The strategy seeks a tax-to-non-oil-GDP ratio of approximately 18% to 20% and a non-tax-revenue-to-GDP ratio of 4% by 2027.
How many actions does the strategy contain?
The document contains 60 policy reforms and 53 administration reforms, for a combined 113 actions across 11 policy themes and five administration categories.
Does a strategy action change the law?
No. A strategy identifies intended reform. A legal change requires the relevant enacted instrument, commencement rule and implementation steps.
Has every MTRS action been implemented?
The strategy itself does not prove implementation. A December 2025 Ministry review says most measures planned for 2024 were implemented, while some were deferred and alternative measures were used, but it does not provide a complete measure-by-measure status schedule.