The deadline for filing the 2025 annual income tax return is 30 April 2026. This return covers your total income earned for the year 2025. It doesn’t matter whether you earned income from employment, business or investment. As long as you earned any income during the year, you are required to file this return. This requirement applies to individuals and companies. This filing deadline is the same deadline for paying any outstanding tax for 2025.
When is it safe not to file the return?
There are two general exceptions. Either you didn’t earn any income at all for the whole of 2025 or the income you earned was a final withholding payment.
A final withholding payment is an income item that once the person paying withholds tax on you, the tax law is done with that income and won’t consider it anywhere else. This category includes dividends paid by resident companies, rent received for the lease of a building or land located in Ghana by a person who is not running a business of renting land or building, and fees received for examining or invigilating an examination or engaging in part-time lecturing or teaching. The person paying you is required to withhold the correct tax and transfer it to the GRA. However, if for some reason the person is not legally required to withhold the tax on you and you have to account for the tax yourself then you have to file the return
For instance, you have a spare room that you have rented out to an individual as residential property. This individual cannot withhold tax on the rent they pay you, although this rent qualifies as a final withholding payment. It means they pay you the full rent. The law requires you to treat this amount as normal income that requires filing of returns. So, if the income you received during 2025 does not fall into this category or even if it does fall into this category but no tax was withheld, the law says you have to file an annual return.
What if your employer paid all your taxes?
In the past, if all your income for the year came from employment, the law said you shouldn’t worry about filing the annual return. However, this position changed from 9th September, 2018. So, currently, if even all your income came from employment and your employer withheld and paid all your taxes to the GRA, the law says you have to file the return. If you fall within this category of taxpayers, the return filing is extremely simple for you. The tax your employer paid should have reflected on your portal. Simply obtain the annual basic salary, allowances and other details from your employer and file the return online. If you have these annual details, it can take you less than three minutes to file the return. The portal will do all the calculations for you. Just click, click and click and then you are done.
Is there any consequence if you don’t file your return?
If you fail to file your return, there is a flat penalty of GHS500 and a daily penalty of GHS10. If you manage to dodge the GRA but one day need a Tax Clearance Certificate, you may have to file the return first before the Certificate can be generated for you. This Certificate is required by some Government agencies. Professional bodies are also required to demand the Certificate before renewing licences of members.
What if 30 April is too short?
The law allows you to ask for extension. If you have a genuine reason why you cannot meet next week’s deadline, apply for extension. The GRA is allowed to extend this deadline for up to two months. If you have tax to pay, you need to separately ask for extension for that.
Why you should file
Filing your return as an employee helps to check if your employer is actually paying your taxes for you. It helps avoid penalties which could have been prevented by spending three minutes to file the return online. You may even have overpaid taxes., which the return will reveal.
Filing the return saves you the stress of a potential audit. It also means you don’t have to be praying hard for the GRA not to catch you or worry when you need something from the GRA that requires checking your tax records. You need to be saying this prayer for six years because the GRA’s power to audit your records extends back six years. Visit taxpayersportal.com to file your return.
