Govt Wants To Tax Mobile Money Transactions – Minority

The Minority in Parliament is pushing government to immediately shelve any plans to tax mobile money transactions. Describing the move as “retrogressive”, Minority also said the tax will affect millions of low income families.

“The intention to tax mobile money transaction must be abolished immediately, since it constitutes a serious threat to financial inclusion and economic growth in Ghana,” Cassiel Ato Forson, Minority spokesperson on finance said on Monday.

Addressing a ’roundtable breakfast discussion on 2018 budget and economic outlook’ on behalf of the Minority NDC, he accused government of trying to introduce some “nuisance” tax to meet its ambitious revenue target in order to fund campaign promises. Ato Forson, who is a former deputy finance minister, remarked, “it is an indirect way of taxing transactions such as transfers for school fees and mobile monies, medical bills in particular…” Cassiel Ato Forson He charged the NPP-led government to rather provide some reliefs to low income families from this “chop money income transfer tax”.

“This is nothing more than a backdoor move to re-introduce the taxes they removed [under the 2017 budget],” he explained. According to him, the business community is already “wailing under heavy and cumbersome tax” imposed on them by government.

Severe austerity and hardships

The Minority discredited the yet-to-be read 2018 government financial statement in spite of the positive assurances made by President Akufo-Addo including a reduction in electricity tariff. “We believe that the 2018 budget won’t create jobs. How can you create jobs when commercial banks are in a big distress? the local banks don’t have the liquidity to lend to the private sector to create jobs. “Ladies and gentlemen let us be assured that next year there will be severe austerity and hardships equivalent to 1983,” Ato Forson said.