The Standard speaks to deputy commissioner general Essa Jallow: The man behind GRA’S domestic tax mobilization

By Omar Bah

The Gambia has been actively working to strengthen its domestic tax mobilisation as a key strategy for boosting public revenue and achieving fiscal sustainability.

The government aims to increase the revenue-to-GDP ratio from 12 percent in 2022 to 15 percent by 2028 through comprehensive reforms in tax policy and administration.

These reforms focus on expanding the tax base, improving compliance, and modernising the tax system, notably through digitalisation efforts by the Gambia Revenue Authority (GRA).

The GRA plays a central role in tax collection and enforcement. It has been enhancing its operational capacity by setting up branch offices for better taxpayer access and investing in automation to move from manual to automated processes for tax filing, payment and reporting.

The GRA also emphasises taxpayer education to foster voluntary compliance and ensure a fair and transparent tax environment. These reforms aim to reduce tax evasion and broaden domestic revenue sources, including personal income tax, corporate income tax, and taxes on goods and services.

Recent fiscal reforms introduced in the 2025 national budget reflect a modernisation of the tax system, including raising the personal income tax thresholds from D2,000 to D3,000 and expanded withholding taxes.

The results of these efforts are visible in recent revenue trends. By mid-2025, government revenue hit D13.78 billion, a 29% increase from the previous year, driven by stronger collections in goods and services taxes and excise duties.

Enhanced customs systems and enforcement mechanisms have contributed significantly to this uptick, underscoring the positive impact of digital tools and compliance initiatives on domestic tax mobilisation.

Focus on domestic taxes
The Gambia’s domestic tax regime is structured to promote equity, expand the tax base, and enhance revenue collection through modernised fiscal policies, building on enhancing the tax laws like the Income and Value Added Tax (IVAT) Act of 2012.

Deputy Commissioner General Essa Jallow stands as a formidable force behind the Gambia Revenue Authority’s (GRA) domestic tax mobilisation success. His leadership, commitment to transparency, efficiency, and stakeholder engagement, combined with a strategic vision for a digitally empowered tax administration system, firmly places him as a central architect of the nation’s fiscal modernisation and sustainability agenda.

Jallow also plays a vital leadership role in modernising and digitally transforming the country’s tax administration system. He has been instrumental in the current development and implementation of the GRA Integrated Tax Administration System (ITAS), a transformative digital platform designed to streamline tax processes, reduce compliance burdens, and curb fraud and corruption.

For more details on how digitalisation is shaping domestic tax mobilisation, DCG Jallow sits down with The Standard for a question-and-answer interview called Tax Bantaba Special.
Omar Bah, The Standard deputy editor whose beat includes covering the Gambia Revenue Authority, sat down with Mr Jallow for this interview.

Excerpts:
The Standard: What are the key changes introduced in the domestic taxes regime over the past year?
Thank you. The importance of taxation is not peculiar to The Gambia alone, but throughout the world, developing or developed, taxation plays a very important role as far as development is concerned. It is one of those areas where you cannot say only developing countries are concentrating on. It is a global thing, and it is part of the laws and practices of countries to attend to the needs of their citizens.

To your question, I will take you back to one important practice that happens every year in the government calendar. Every year, around the end of the year, the Minister of Finance goes to the National Assembly and presents a budget speech. There the Minister will talk about the intentions of the government for the next fiscal year in terms of revenue and expenditure.

So, on the revenue part; he will discuss changes that the government intends to bring to support the tax system.

In 2012, a very important reform happened in The Gambia in terms of taxation and that was the introduction of the VAT. That came with a law to change the taxation of mainly consumption from sales tax to VAT and the idea was government being conscious of the fact that they need more revenues.

They needed a base or a method that brings more taxes by widening the tax base to ensure everybody rich or poor pays their taxes.

It helps the country to mobilise more revenue. But since we are mobilising more from consumption, the poor may be more affected because their income is relatively lower than the income of the rich.

That is one reason why when we introduced VAT, we exempted things that relate to people’s livelihood, like basic food commodities, education, and agricultural inputs.

So that was a very important reform that happened in 2012. And now, over the years also, there have been changes in the corporation tax rate. Initially it was 35%, and then we reduced it to 32% in 2011, then further reduced over the years up to 27% in 2018.

We have also over the years felt that the personal tax needs to be looked at. If you want to support small entrepreneurs and livelihood of salary earners, you need to reduce the burden.

This is why we have over time increased the tax-free threshold from a level that was D7,500 per annum to D18,000 per annum in 2013 and then to D24,000 per annum in 2018. By this tax-free threshold, one gets part of their income that will not be taxed, i.e., you pay tax at 0%. That is envisaged to support the population. The first time we moved to D24,000, from grade 1 to grade 3 in government, all of them are getting their salary without paying tax.

What we realised was that these people were being taxed before they could even buy a bag of rice. We felt that is not right for a government that wants to uplift and improve the status of its people in terms of reducing poverty and encouraging sustainable livelihoods.

Now, imagine grade 1 to grade 3, nobody pays tax. And a good number of them were paying. The idea is those thresholds are being adjusted to make sure that at least the poor particularly are supported by the basic things they need before the state comes and tax their income. In January of 2025, the threshold again moved up to D36,000. Now everybody in The Gambia earning from zero to D3,000, don’t pay tax. It is only incomes over D3,000 that are required to pay tax.

Reform on Gambling
When we realised that a lot of Gambling companies are coming into the country with the potential of destroying our young people or making them lazy, we decided to increase the taxes on Gambling so that the winners are taxed more.

We also came back to say now, every taxpayer who is a light taxpayer, you must submit audited accounts. That is to make sure that those who are into big investments, who have the greatest burden of compliance, are reporting accurately.

So, these are many other reforms we did in terms of changes in the Gambian tax system.

Like I have said, the corporation tax changed many times until it was 27%. If you look at the tax on the turnover also, it used to be 2% on audited accounts. So, these are all things we do to not only collect but collect fairly and encourage those who are willing to comply.

That is why we are taxing those who present audited accounts at a lower rate on their business turnover. If you look at the rental, the rates have changed.

The commercial rental income used to be taxed using the first schedule but now changed to a flat rate of 15%. The residential property used to be 10% but now it is 8%. When it comes to withholding tax, the amount to withhold, like those that deal with government, including the media, is 10% but that has also been reduced to 8%. And for those dealing with government projects, particularly for public works, we have reduced their withholding tax to 5%. So this is just making life easy for the taxpayers.

Also, there used to be 15% withholding tax on payments to non-residents but now we have reduced the rate to 10%.

We are continuing to revisit the tax system and making sure that we are aligning it more to reality. In other words, this is a continuous process.

The systems that we are introducing, from ITAS to single window, electronic invoicing, and revenue assurance, all these systems, before they are implemented, we put forward some regulations and amendments to the laws to make sure that the new things that we are introducing are supported legally because taxation is not an arbitrary discipline where the Minister or the President or the GRA Commissioner General can just get up and say, today we are taxing you this. No. Taxation is based on a legal foundation.

The law must be there first before you tax. So, all the systems we are introducing, we will check the law first to ensure that they are backed by law.

And if there are extra things that we need to do, we amend the laws and promulgate regulations to make sure that we are empowered legally to impose whatever taxes we want to impose.

That is how these things work. So, I think in a nutshell, I have given you a rundown of what has been happening, particularly in terms of changes.

But just to wrap up, in taxation, every change must be occasioned by a legal change. There cannot be a change without the laws being in place.

That is why the National Assembly is very important in the equation because before GRA can tax, there must be policies and laws approved by the National Assembly.

So in other words, the GRA is just an administrator, we are just collectors. The National Assembly is responsible of imposing the taxes.

They decide who to tax, when to tax, and where to tax.

For us, we are just implementing those legal frameworks as tools to do our work.

How does the GRA address common taxpayer challenges when filing domestic taxes, and what support mechanisms are available?
What we have now is the GamTaxNet which is predominantly manual. It does not support electronic filing or electronic payment. In other words, it is limited in terms of what it can do. That is the reason why we are working on introducing the ITAS so that all these things, from the filing to the payment, and all these other things that would facilitate smooth transactions for taxpayers when discharging their obligations, are available online. The ITAS is a web-based system that supports electronic transactions from e-filing and e-payment to the other tax services.

We believe that what is currently happening is not helping in terms of reducing the burden attached to filing.

The current system requires that they print and fill in the returns manually and bring them to our offices. From there, the process of accepting these returns and putting them in the GAMTaxNet follows.

When the return is put in the system, it is matched with the corresponding payment. If one pays less, tax arrears are created. If you pay more than what is in return, you have an overpayment. But the current system of filing really comes with a higher cost of compliance for the taxpayers and the GRA. We believe that can also affect the integrity of the data. That is why we want to solve that problem; we want to bring the ITAS to provide a single inputting system.

With the ITAS, when you login to the system, the return accessible and you fill out the required information, you click submit, and the Revenue Authority receives your return straightaway.

That saves the taxpayer the trouble of filling a form with a pen or putting a form in a bag walking to an office which has financial impact and time consuming. The fascinating part about the ITAS is that you can sit in your house or anywhere and login into the system.

And now that it is coming directly into a system, taxpayers do not need to come to GRA and having to be attended by an officer.

What is happening currently is not conducive for the taxpayer or GRA because some of the returns may be misplaced.

So the integrity of the data is also affected. But the systems and processes we are putting in place now will significantly improve compliance and make paying tax more attractive and smoother.

In terms of support for now, taxpayers who fail to file a return or have problems of filling, GRA officials are available to assist them.

But for the more organised businesses, a good number of them work with accounting firms who advise them or assist them because the law allows them to do it or to nominate or appoint a representative to do it for them.

That is the situation right now but there will be improvement and with the signing of the contract for the ITAS and implementation underway hopefully by next year we will start rolling out certain models of the system.

Once that is done, all services will be digitally enabled in a manner that is so seamless and cost effective.

In anticipation of the full rollout of the ITAS, we are providing capacity building for our staff and sensitising taxpayers ensure that there is buy-in.

How are audits, investigations and enforcement actions carried out in cases of suspected fraud?
Right now, things are done at different levels.

For a taxpayer to be selected for an audit, at the operational level, you must be suspected e.g., filing nil tax returns all the time indicating you don’t have anything to pay or claiming that you are on credit every time. When these excuses are consistent or we notice that the submissions they bring that they are claiming expenses that are not easy to comprehend, we have to verify through an audit. These are some of the risk areas. In other words, our audits are risk-based.

You must see certain risks that affect their compliance and the revenues that we receive. Then, at the operational level, they pull them out and send them to audit. But, we run a self-assessment regime, which means that it is the taxpayers’ obligation to assess themselves and present those assessments to GRA in the form of tax returns.

We believe that it’s not fair for GRA to say you should pay a certain amount per year. That’s for you, it’s your business, it’s your economic activity. Look at what the law has prescribed in terms of reporting and payment you report that in your return.

At the frontline, as enforcement officers, we cannot just bring a taxpayer and say what he/she is paying is small. No, you can’t say that because you don’t have reasons to say that. You are not the one in business. You are not the one generating the business income or spending on the business. Except if it is backed by evidence, we cannot say a taxpayer has paid little tax.

So, you are obliged to accept that payment. Now, if you have those observations, certain areas of risk that you have noted, then on the basis of that, a referral can be made to audit and further investigations will be done on the file to confirm the accuracy of reporting and payment.

That is one part. The other part is we do data matching. We collect data from the Accountant Generals Department in terms of businesses and individuals who are getting payment.

We also collect data from GPPA in terms of who is registering there to do business. We collect data from Ministry of Justice in terms of who is going there to register a business and we collect data from customs in terms of who imports what.

For all these, a team looks at all this data. We match it in terms of what you have done in the economy and compare it with what have you reported. Let’s say Accountant Generals Department alone paid you D10 million. Then you come at the end of the year and claim that you only generated D1 million. Already, there is a problem because this is only one client and it is government and the payment you received indicates D10 million. That is not even to talk about where else you sold and were paid. We will then bring you and ask you to explain because this is not okay.

At that point, you can go and revise your return and put what is right. But that is also a reason to select you for audit because you are not genuine. You are not reporting accurately. We also verify these accuracies through the customs import data where we are able to see the volume of what you have brought and compare it with the revenue you have reported and taxes you paid.

We inform the taxpayer that what is in the customs system is cost, being the cost of goods you brought from outside. You put them on a ship. You paid the freight and other expenses. You came to the port, you paid customs duties etc. These are all costs and now, if you are in business, you should make enough money to cover all that because otherwise, if you don’t make enough money to cover all that, then you are telling us that those goods were gifted. Somebody gifted you the goods, put them on a ship and paid everything. Because otherwise, how can you convince me that you are in business and you are not making enough money to pay that? That is also a reason to select a taxpayer for audit. In other words, we are becoming more scientific because our audit selections are risk-based.

It’s not that I don’t like Omar or Omar is saying bad things about me or he is an opposition.

No! We must have evidence that shows that there is risk that we need to mitigate. And on the basis of that, you are selected for audit. Now, that can even get better with the introduction of ITAS. When ITAS is operational, we interface our system with all these agencies I talked about, including immigration. We will not tell you to bring an ID card for TIN registration because the ITAS will be connected to immigration system and the two systems will exchange data. With your number, we will get your details and then proceed with the processing of the TIN. The ITAS will be able to pull data from every system connected to it and we will run our risk engine on all this data and it will select those ones that are suspicious. That will be how taxpayers will be selected for audits, investigations or enforcement actions.