Businesses that use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and Netflix will from April Fool’s 2022, be required to pay taxes in Ghana as the broke Akufo Addo administration desperately seek revenue sources.
Speaking at the launch of the E-Commerce Portal for Tax Registration and Compliance, Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Rev. Dr. Amishaddai Owusu-Amoah, said the government is aiming to raise Ghc1.7billion from the platform.
And online businesses of non-Ghanaians will be a special focus as well.
“The portal that has been launched to track and trace earnings of social media and online businesses is going live before the April 1st, 2022 deadline, for the beginning of the collection. This non-resident initiative will serve as a pilot to the overall aim of taxing all social media and online operations in the country”, the GRA boss explained.
“This will include all online platforms and social media handles that get some form of profit from their operations here in Ghana. It is a move that will increase our tax to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio and also improve revenue generation for the 2022 budget”, said Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah.
This social media tax is different from the obnoxious electronic transfer levy (e-levy) that the government has vowed to extract from the savings of Ghanaians, despite 90% of the country being vehemently against it.
The social media tax will be the umpteenth tax in the slew of taxes that the wasteful Akufo Addo administration hopes to offset all the massive debt and huge repayments it had saddled the economy into.
With a debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at over 80%, the government had piled up the public debt to over GHC 300 billion with the government borrowing over 50% of this amount in a debt appetite that dwarfs all previous governments combined.
“We have identified more businesses that fall under this category and we’re hopeful that they will comply because it is their civic duty,” the GRA boss explained.
He warned that all non-compliance companies will be blocked from doing any profitable business in Ghana through a system operated in collaboration with the Bank of Ghana.