Economist and former rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, Prof. Stephen Adei, has restated his belief that the approval of the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy) was a necessity in raising revenue.
According to him, paying the levy was just a matter of time, because government needed to tax electronic transactions seeing that in his words, ‘it’s a low hanging fruit.’
In an interview with Accra100.5FM’s morning show last week, he also waded into the issue of who can be classified a poor person.
He stressed that the tax in its current state did not adversely affect the poor because of the exemption regime especially relative to mobile money transactions.
In his view, with an average pay of GHC1,500 cedis, anyone with capacity to transfer GHC3,000 in a month could not be classed as ‘poor.’
“For the poor, even if you transfer GHS100 thirty times, you will not pay e-levy… anybody who is able to transfer GHS3,000 in a month is not poor in Ghana because the average graduate pay is GHS1,500.”
“So, the e-levy will not affect a lot of people,” he added.
GhanaFeed.com
