Browsing: Electronic Transactions Levy

The E-levy charge covers mobile money payments, bank transfers, merchant payments, and inward remittances (Ghana Revenue Authority, 2022).

“E-levy can be made better. It can be made more efficient. Let us reduce the rate to 0.5% and I am sure we can raise a lot of revenue,” Prof. Peter Quartey has said in Accra, last week, during a pre-budget discussion.

The survey report released by CDD-Ghana shows, out of the total sample size, only 9 percent of Ghanaians are confident that the government will use revenue from the E-levy to fund development. This means, about 91% Ghanaians have no confident in the government when it comes to judicious utilisation of tax monies.

So some policy analysts and journalists have described Gabby’s tweet as a mind game on Ghanaians to pave way for government to announce intent of going to the IMF since revenues are low.

According to the chamber, per the current law, salaries that are paid via mobile money would attract the 1.5% charge, whereas salaries paid through banks will not attract any E-levy. They described such move as discriminatory.

Although the telcos have assured to do their best to ensure the required systems are put in place to collect the E-levy, they say, the right infrastructure must be put in place, and tested to ensure that they are fit for purpose before going live.

The number of MoMo transactions also saw a drop from 401 million in December to 372 in January this year. This comes at the time of heated controversy surrounding the introduction of Electronic Transactions Levy which will have every MOMO transactions exceeding GHC300 to be taxed 1.75%.