Deputy Tourism and Creative Arts Minister, Mark Okraku-Mantey, has voiced out the need for government to tax Ghanaians operating businesses in the e-commerce space.
According to him, taxing people who operate businesses in the digital sphere falls in the right direction for government to generate additional revenue to support the economy.
Speaking in an interview on Daybreak Hitz on Hitz FM, Mr Okraku-Mantey said the focus shouldn’t be just on YouTube and blogging sites but rather every individual or organisation buying and selling of goods and services over an electronic network, primarily the internet.
My job is to get you to start the conversation. If you are doing blogging for fun no one will tax you. But if you are doing advertisement and taking money then we have to tax it. I don’t want to limit it to blog only. It is generally e-commerce. It is bigger than blogging and YouTube.
I am not sure the GRA is specialised in the ecommerce space yet. They will have to do more work on that.
Even if we decide not to look at it, the opposition has shown interest. Almost all my jobs on YouTube I didn’t put it there. It is someone else and the person who has stolen it is not paying tax.
There is a lot of money in the e-commerce space, especially now when we are not selling in the geographic space. When GRA gets to that stage they will engage and all will be done. I am not a tax expert… there are people who are experts. I am just to prompt you that it exists.
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