John E.K. Sotenga
Deputy Commissioner for Operations, Internal Revenue Service, Ghana
Focus: Civil Service
Topics: One-Stop Shops
Keywords: training, recruitment, pay reform, one-stop shops, merit pay, decentralization, capacity building
Interviewer(s): David Hausman
Country of Reform: Ghana
Location: IRS head office, Accra, Ghana
Date: Thu Jan 28 2010
Abstract
John E.K. Sotenga discusses his long experience in Ghana's Internal Revenue Service and the gradual improvements that were made in capacity. He focuses on the challenges of reorganizing tax administration along functional lines. As the first director of Ghana’s Large Taxpayers Unit, a one-stop shop for large taxpayers, Sotenga encountered the difficulties of integrating staff from three separate agencies: the IRS, the customs agency, and the value-added tax agency. He stresses the importance of placing employees from the three different agencies in groups together on specific tasks, thereby allowing them to gradually transfer their skills to one another.
Case Study: Professionalization, Decentralization, and a One-Stop Shop: Tax Collection Reform in Ghana, 1986-2008
Full Profile
At the time of this interview, Mr. Sotenga was deputy commissioner for operations at Ghana's Internal Revenue Service. He joined the Ghanaian Central Revenue Department in 1978 as an assistant inspector and moved up through the ranks, first becoming chief inspector, then heading several regional tax offices. In Accra, he directed first the Large Taxpayers Office—a division of the IRS created in 1996—and later the Large Taxpayers Unit, a one-stop shop that allowed large taxpayers to pay all taxes at one central location.
