The Ghana Chamber of Young Entrepreneurs has called for the scrapping of e-commerce tax.
The Chief Executive of the chamber, Sherif Ghali, explained that the tax hinders the growth of micro-small businesses which operate online and leverage social media platforms such as Meta and other e-commerce sites to advertise their products and services.
He made the call while ahead of the 2025 Budget presentation on Tuesday, March 11, 2025.
“I’m looking forward to seeing the removal of some taxes, like the e-commerce tax. I’m looking forward to that because a huge number of my young entrepreneurs do their business online. Renting an office space in Accra, in fact, the whole of Ghana is expensive.”
He added that the e-commerce tax serves as a disincentive to Ghana’s drive to digitalization.
“The cost in renting, furnishing, employing in-office staff and associated administrative costs is becoming expensive. Meanwhile we are asking people to digitalize their business.”
“So I should be able to be in the house and still be able to do my business but here’s the case you are in your house, you go to Instagram to place and ad and you are taxed for that. That is not fair” he opined.
Similarly, a pre-budget survey by auditing and accounting firm, KPMG, also recommended for a review of taxes in the digital and e-commerce sectors.
It continued that the country will lose about GH¢6.4 billion in revenue if the government cancels the Covid -19 and the E-levy taxes in the 2025 Budget.
The survey, however suggested that government leverage technology to enhance the collection of taxes, notably property rates.
Meanwhile, the Minister for Finance, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson on his X account disclosed that government will roll out measures aimed at rationalizing the current tax structure in the country, targeting the Value Added Tax.
Dr. Forson also noted that there will be the introduction of new programmess expected to improve tax compliance.
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