A practical checklist for getting PAYE, SSNIT and WHT right every month

Statutory compliance in Ghana is not intellectually hard. It is procedurally unforgiving. The bands are published, the rates are known, the deadlines do not move — and yet penalties are routine, because the process usually lives in one person's habits rather than in a system.

The monthly loop

1. Freeze the payroll inputs. Overtime, allowances, bonuses, loan deductions and new starters all in before the run — not after.
2. Run PAYE on current bands. Check that the tax table in use is the current one; a stale band table is the single most common source of a quiet underpayment.
3. Split SSNIT correctly. Tier 1 and Tier 2 are different destinations with different filings. Treating them as one line is how a reconciliation goes wrong six months later.
4. Capture withholding tax at the point of payment. Not at month end from memory. If your payables module does not prompt for WHT when you pay a vendor, it will be missed.
5. Reconcile the remittance to the ledger. The amount filed and the amount sitting in the statutory liability account should agree before you pay, not after.
6. File, pay, and file the certificate away. WHT certificates your vendors will ask for months later should be issued the same week.

Make the calendar do the remembering

The firms that never miss a deadline are rarely the most diligent — they are the ones whose system raises the task, blocks the close until it is done, and keeps the evidence attached to the period. A deadline calendar that nobody has to maintain by hand is worth more than a very good reminder from a very good person, because the good person eventually goes on leave.