E-Levy roped in informal sector into the tax net - GRA

Assistant Commissioner in charge of Strategy, Research, Policy and Programmes at the Ghana Revenue Authority, Charles Addae, has noted that the introduction of the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy) was to rope in the informal sector into the tax net.

He explained that government cannot solely rely on the formal sector for revenue generation, hence, the new approach [E-Levy] to get everyone, especially persons within the informal sector to support the country by way of paying E-Levy.

In an interview with the media on the sidelines of the Taxing Mobile Money, Lessons and Ways Forward Conference held in Accra on Wednesday, February 28, 2024, the GRA Assistant Commissioner announced that government was able to rake in an amount of GH¢1.2 billion from the most-talked about tax - E-Levy.

Charles Addae said, "Ghana introduced E-Levy in 2022, we’ve had a lot of challenges implementing this tax. However, in 2022, some amount of 600million was collected. In 2023, we were able to improve on this performance and we raised GH¢1.2billion from the E-Levy. The idea is how can we improve tax revenue without burdening the existing taxpayers?"

"So we are always looking for an approach, new areas to tap into the informal sector so that everybody in Ghana will contribute his quota in the revenue collection. The formal system has depended on existing businesses, and employees in always raising the national revenue and there is a need to go into the informal sector to be able to raise revenue to support the country," he added.

The conference was organized by the International Centre for Tax and Development in partnership with the Ghana Revenue Authority.

The introduction of E-Levy, according to the government formed part of measures to help improve its domestic revenue mobilization.

Following several criticisms, the E-Levy tax was reviewed downwards from 1.5% to 1%.

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