According the report, Parliament is set to debate the controversial Electronic Transactions Levy Bill on Tuesday, March 29 and, probably, pass it same day.
Though the Bill was not part of the agenda for the business week, it is set to be passed before President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo visits the House to read the SONA on Wednesday.
On 17th November 2021, the Minister for Finance announced during the presentation of the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of Government to the Parliament of Ghana, the introduction of an “Electronic Transaction Levy” or “E-Levy” of 1.75 percent on electronic transactions above GHs 100 (US$16) per day to take effect from 1st February 2022.
The levy will be applied to mobile money payments, bank transfers, merchant payments, and inward remittances (MoF 2022 Budget Highlights). All charges will be borne by the sender except in the case of inward remittances where the charge will be borne by the recipient.
According to the Finance Minister, the country’s total digital transactions for 2020 were estimated to be over GH¢500 billion (about US$81 billion) compared to GH¢78 billion (US$12.5 billion) in 2016. As a result, Government is projecting to rake in tax revenue of about GH¢6.96 billion (US$1.1 billion) in 2022, and about GH¢26.90 billion (US$4.5 billion) from 2023 to 2025 after the implementation of the electronic transaction levy to help widen the tax net and rope in the informal sector (PwC 2022 Budget Digest).
This announcement has led to different reactions from the industry’s stakeholders, with some of them supporting the tax introduction as a way to collect public revenues while others criticizing such measure and its negative impact on digital payments and on the digitization journey that Ghana is championing.
Ghana’s GDP contribution led by the Services sector, accounted for an average share of 51.9 percent first half of 2021 with the majority coming from the Information and Communication sub-sector, thus making a compelling case for Government to review that sector in its bid to generate more revenue. However, many analysts have said that government needs to explore multiple sources of tax revenue than to target a big source of its revenue from taxing electronic transactions.
