Cassiel Ato Forson, the Ranking Member of the Finance Committee of Parliament, has told Communications Minister, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful to stay away from issues relating to tax since she has no knowledge on them, ABC News can report
Speaking on the back of a recommendation by Ursula Owusu to the Finance Minister and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to consider taxing profits of telcos made from mobile money transactions, the tax practitioner indicated that the income made by the mobile operators is already taxed
Addressing the press in Accra on the performance of the Common Monitoring Platform operated by KelniGVG, the Communications Minister said mobile money companies earn on average GH¢71 million monthly as transaction fees adding that particular income “ought” to be taxed.
But the Minority Spokesperson on Finance, who about two weeks ago had a ‘battle of words’ with the Communications Minister on the Communications Service Tax increase, insisted that there are tax experts in Government like the Finance Minister who should be left with such matters.
“I always said that she does not understand taxes and it’s not for her. Profits are always taxed in this country. If you’re a company and you’ve registered mobile money, your income as profit is already taxed in the system, she has no clue. If you’re an individual and you have to pay income tax, your income is the work you’re doing and so you access that income and you’re taxed according to the threshold
“I have always advised [Ursula] my friend that she should stay away from taxes because she has no clue. She should leave it to the Minister of Finance. She has tax experts, she should not go into areas that she has no knowledge about,” he stated.
Speaking to TV3’s Nuong Faalong on Hot Issues, the Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam legislator argued that a move to tax mobile money operations will amount to double taxation as the total profits of communication companies are already taxed.
The total value of mobile money transactions for the first six months of this year reached 140.2 billion cedis, up from the 104.6 billion cedis recorded in the same period in 2018.
Data released by the Bank of Ghana shows that this represents a 34 per cent rise in the value of transactions recorded for the period under review.
