OMCs dispute Auditor-General’s tax evasion claims

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Some Oil Marketing Companies cited in the Auditor General’s 2018 report for nonpayment of taxes have disputed the claim that they owe the state.

Ten Oil Marketing companies were cited in the report.

They include Ghana Oil Company (GOIL), Star Oil Company Limited and Radiance Petroleum Limited, Tell Energy, Glee Oil, Hills Oil, So Energy, Nasona and Agapet Ghana Limited.

Goil is said to be owing Ghc28 million while Radiance Oil has an outstanding debt of Ghc3.7 million. Tell Energy follows with Ghc1.3 million.

However, some of the affected OMC’s have rejected the report. GOIL says it has not defaulted in the payment of taxes.

“When we received the letter, we promptly responded by communicating to GRA that per our own analysis and declarations, the records from the petroleum lifting, had errors, and these errors were lifted by us to the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA),” Public Relations Manager for GOIL, Robert Kyere explained.

He said his outfit promptly alerted officials of the GRA to correct the anomaly in their GCNet system.

“When we sent the report to them, we asked that they reconcile their records with ours. We submitted duly to the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the records will show that we have paid all our taxes and levies.”

Financial Controller for Star Oil, Philip Teiku questions how the GRA arrived at those figures.

“We haven’t been given details of how the whole figures were arrived at. We called the customs office to ask them but they also said they had no idea we owe.”

General Manager for Radiance Oil, Joseph Addai also said his outfit will respond to the Auditor General and attach all supporting documents to prove that they are tax compliant.

“We want to put on record that we do not have anything outstanding debt but the fact of the matter is that, earlier this year, we got a notification from the tax office of the GRA concerning some outstanding tax liability.

So we were required to provide supporting documents. We are unaware of any outstanding issues until we saw the report yesterday,” he noted.

CBN

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