By Vanessa Adjei
Since its passage, the Electronic Transfer Levy, E-levy has met mixed reactions from the public, politicians, and economists among others. Adding his voice to the issue, the deputy minister for tourism, Mark Oraku Mantey has described the levy as a “pool for all the Ministries to tap into”.
Explaining his concept about the E-levy on the GTV Breakfast Show, Mr. Mantey said he supports the E-Levy because he believes skilled workers in the informal sector such as Masons, Carpenters, and others do not pay any direct tax on the income they receive, but they are quick to complain about poor infrastructure, poor road networks and many other problems facing the country which he cannot seem to fathom.
The Deputy Tourism Minister noted that the E-Levy will help Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, and SMEs to stay in business for long and also help the country tax Ghanaian YouTubers, vloggers, and bloggers who earn on social media and other online transactions.
“So I ask myself how do we fix these things that make you complain about what you do not contribute. Again, the small business enterprise comes up in a few years and they collapse because they are overloaded with some taxes so why don’t we expand the scope to help reduce the corporate Ghana of taxes so we can distribute it such that you don’t overload the few who have agreed to pay for it”.
“My creative people are selling on YouTube, iTunes, bolt foods, uber, people are now buying clothes online, are they paying anything to the government? No, I think after the momo I think we need to go heavily online and then cyber to see what we can get from there” he added.
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