Last Thursday, the Ashanti Regional Office of the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) shuttered six lodging establishments in the area for failing to pay the tourism levy in accordance with Legislative Instrument (LI) 2185.
It was a small aspect of a larger effort to punish accommodations for failing to pay the tourism levy.
The GTA owes almost GH200,000 in levies that 20 establishments in the area collected on its behalf.
The greatest debt due by a single firm was GH 29,338 by one of them, going back to 2011.
The sum owed covered the time frame up to June 2022.
Exercise
Frederick Kyei-Rudolph, the GTA's Ashanti Regional Manager, informed the media that the majority of the facilities had declined to levie the authority and remit it.
He said that despite repeated requests, none of the institutions paid the charge and that the level of compliance in the area was not very promising.
Though the authority had granted licenses to more than 700 hotels and other lodging establishments in the area to impose the fee, he claimed that "we get about half of them regularly paying the levy on a monthly basis."
He clarified that the levy was a fee paid by customers rather than a tax imposed on the facilities and voiced concern about the facilities' persistent failure to pay the receipts they submitted to the authorities.
According to Mr. Kyei-Rudolph, the proprietor of one of the facilities is a difficult customer who continued to operate despite closure warnings being posted on the facility's doors.
Out of the eight facilities that were inspected, six were ultimately shut down, while the other two made agreements to settle their debts within two weeks of receiving a partial payment prior to the team's visit.
The exercise, which is scheduled to last two days, includes 20 regional faculties reserved by the authority.
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