On of Ghana’s highly celebrated investigative journalist and chief editor of the fourth estate investigative media house Manasseh Azure Awuni has charged into the argument surrounding the E-Levy.
He believes there’s a difference between telecommunication who offer services to Ghanaians and the taxing of some percentage on monies transactions electronically.
Check out what he said below:
Some proponents of the E-Levy are arguing that if we are okay paying 1% (10 Cedis maximum) to the telcos, why do we have any problem paying 1.75% to the government as tax?
The telcos are offering a service. Instead of walking or driving to the bank to send money, the telcos say I can do that while eating TZ and dry okro soup at home. For that service, they are charging me a fee of 1% of the transaction. In order not to affect me so much, they don’t go beyond 10 cedis even if I’m transferring 10,000 cedis.
The government isn’t providing any service. It is simply saying that, for enjoying that comfort, people have to pay a tax. And we don’t even know if it will be capped as the telcos do.
One thing is sure. People are generally rational consumers. They will switch to cash and use electronic payments only when it’s extremely necessary. Momo transactions will drop. The digitization and digitalization agenda will be defeated.
And whatever benefits that would have accrued from it, including widening the tax net, will be negated.
And this is coming from a group of people who promised to switch from taxation to production, those who promised to seal the leakages instead of burdening Ghanaians with tax.
Is this what they meant when they said they were better manages of the economy?
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