Business News of Friday, 18 February 2022
Source: www.ghanaweb.live
2022-02-18E-commerce tax must be strategically implemented – Digital Marketer
Digital marketer Naasei Boadi
GRA to tax online businesses, gaming and bet
Government incentives will help boost revenue
GRA has revenue target of 80.3billion this year
Digital marketer Naasei Boadi says the Ghana Revenue Authority must strategically position itself to be able to successfully collect taxes from e-commerce.
His comment follows plans by GRA to begin taxing online
Read full articlebusinesses from April 2022.
According to Naasei Boadi, the move will help Authority avert any resistance that may come from players in the industry.
Speaking to CitiNews, he said, “There’s so much unknown out there. There may be other things that the government can dangle to these platforms to encourage them to bring everything to book so that they can be able to tax them effectively. Otherwise, my fear is that a lot of people will push to the informal sector and it will become difficult to tax them and regulate them.”
The GRA said it would begin taxing e-commerce, gaming and bet as part of measures to attain its revenue target of 80.3 billion Ghana cedis and a tax to GDP ratio of up to 16.5% for this year 2022.
Netflix, Facebook and other multinational online businesses that gain revenue from Ghana after the tax has been rolled out will be obligated to comply with Ghana’s e-commerce tax.
According to Citi Business news reports, a special-purpose software has already been designed to monitor these businesses and tax them accordingly.
Mr. Boadi added that there are a lot of benefits that will be derived from the e-commerce tax if it is implemented.
“There could be a whole range of benefits, that, for example, you’ll find that a lot of the things that people are selling now are imported. So, one of the things I want to encourage is, are there going to be any tax concessions for people who are importing on some of these platforms?”
“Are there going to be any tax concessions? For example, for people who are buying local products and selling them on these platforms? To people who are even paying I mean, we’re buying their products on these platforms, for example, are we going to get any rebates, for example, so that if you buy from these platforms, okay, are you going to get any reduced taxes because people already paying taxes on these items when you buy them via online, and they are already taxing the companies that are doing it formally,” he noted.
