The Minister for Communications and Digitalization, Ursula Owusu Ekuful has said that the government is expected to raise over Ghc500 million a month from the E-Transactions levy.
“So if you are looking at bulk payments, cashouts, person to person transfers, wallet to bank transfers, as of October we are looking at about Ghc11 million, if you are looking at the merchants, debit payments, sending, transfers, transfers to vouchers and the cashouts we are looking at Ghc440 million.
“If you are looking at GHIPSS, and merchant payments and direct debit payments and organizations paying to customers and paying bills and sending money we are looking at Ghc45 million so in total it is possible for the government to get about Ghc500 million from this in a month.”
“Total value of transactions for 2020 was estimated to be over GHS 500 billion Cedis compared to GH¢78 billion Cedis in 2016 just 5 years ago, while total mobile money subscribers and active mobile money users have grown by an average rate of 18% and 16% respectively between 2016 and 2019. Mr. Speaker, it is becoming clear there exists the enormous potential to increase tax revenues by bringing into the tax bracket, transactions that could be best defined as being undertaken in the “shadow economy”.
“After considerable deliberations, the 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.”
Source: Abba Kwegyirba Aggrey
