A member for the communications team of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Gabriella Tetteh, has advised the government against introducing the Electronic Transaction levy (E-levy).
She said a large majority of Ghanaians will stop transacting businesses on digital platforms if the levy proposed in the 2022 budget gets Parliament's approval.
According to her, the government's decision to introduce such a new tax, after increasing all taxes in the country will only scare people away from transacting businesses digitally.
Speaking on Good Morning Ghana on Monday, November 22, 2021, Gabriella Tetteh said the current New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration is introducing the 1.75 levy on network services that were already charging one per cent and it has raised the total rates to 2.75 per cent.
She indicated that the incident of taxation on mobile money transactions alone has now increased to 63.63 per cent and the amount charged on interoperability has also increased to 53.84 per cent.
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“If you want to encourage people to move things digitally, you don’t impose high fees on those transactions because it will rather keep people out of that service,” she said.
Ghanaians will from next year pay a levy on MoMo and other electronic transactions in the country.
Presenting the 2022 Budget Statement in Parliament on Wednesday, November 17, Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta said: "After considerable deliberations, Government has decided to place a levy on all electronic transactions to widen the tax net and rope in the informal sector. This shall be known as the “Electronic Transaction Levy or E-Levy."
According to him, the E-Levy will cover mobile money payments (MoMo), bank transfers, merchant payments and inward remittances.