Member of Parliament for Jirapa constituency in the Upper West Region of Ghana, Cletus Seidu Dapilah, has assured Ghanaian youth that his party, the New Democratic Congress (NDC), will scrap the 10% tax on betting and lottery winnings if they win in the 2024 general elections.
Parliament on March 31, 2023 passed the Income Tax (Amendment) (No.2) bill, 2022 into law, which sought to impose a 10% withholding tax on all gross gaming winnings
On August 15, 2023, the 10% withholding tax was implemented, which has generated a lot of backlash from the youth of the country.
However, the Jirapa MP, has offered a new hope to the youth, promising that his government will abolish the tax.
According to him, government has failed to provide jobs for the youth, that is why they have sought to betting and lottery in order to survive and argued that taxing their winnings is not the best thing to do.
“It is not the making of the youth that they are into betting. They must survive. We haven’t been able to give them good jobs.
If you go the betting centers and you see the caliber of people who are into it, these are graduates, with some having masters.
They have completed school and after five to six years, they are not getting a job so they think that betting is the only means for them to survive.
So, it is not something that we should want to tax as much as 10%. So, I can assure the youth that the NDC party is saying that the 10% tax, we will scrap it, ” he told Joy News.
He continued by saying that the timing is wrong for the implementation of the tax, because there are no jobs available.
“We think that the youth must survive. If the government of the day cannot provide them jobs and they find themselves into this betting to survive, it is not at this crucial moment that you should be imposing such taxes on them.
In any case, when they collect such taxes, how are those taxes beneficial to the youth when they have no jobs,” he asked.
