Professor Stephen Adei opposes move to scrap E-levy

An economist, Professor Stephen Adei wants the E-levy to be maintained.

Speaking on the Agenda show on TV3 on Tuesday, March 4, he stated that rather than scrapping the tax, there is a need for many rationalisations of the taxes.

“It is wrong to remove E-Levy,” he said.

He stressed, “There is a need for much rationalisation of our taxes than scraping them.”

Regarding the Betting Tax, Prof Adei earlier indicated that the tax should be increased from the current 10 per cent to 50%.

He expressed the view that betting is a disastrous habit that should be discouraged.

His call is rather against a promise by President-elect John Dramani Mahama to scrap several taxes within his first 100 days in office, arguing that these taxes burdened Ghanaians.

In an earlier interview, the former Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) said “As a father, as a Christian leader we call it sin tax, sin taxes must be higher, not reduced. everywhere in the world, cigarette taxes, alcoholic taxes betting taxes, I will want them to be 50%. Because I don’t want my grandchildren to be betting, betting is one of the disastrous habits that we should discourage.”

He added “There should be a total tax review. There are too many taxes. For example, I imported something and I saw about 21 taxes on our car import, that is ridiculous. So we need a total look at the taxes but in looking at it, look at ones which are easier to collect, which is more widespread so that the tax base will be very narrow.

“There are only about one million income taxpayers in Ghana out of 33 million people of which half are adults. That is why the e-levy, if it can be reduced, should be kept, then you must go for property taxes because you cannot put your house in your pocket. You must cut funding for local government, for example in Accra they should be able to collect property rates. ”

The government had promised to scrap the Betting tax and other levis. This was a campaign promised made by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) during the 2024 election season.

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