{"id":667712,"date":"2019-07-30T13:08:41","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T13:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"<br><div>\n<p>A member of Parliament\u2019s Communications Committee, Sam Nartey George has urged Ghanaians to reject the reasons for the recently announced increase in \u201ctalk tax.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to him, the explanations provided for the upward adjustment in "},"modified":"2019-07-30T13:08:41","modified_gmt":"2019-07-30T13:08:41","slug":"reasons-for-increasing-talk-tax-incomprehensible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2019\/07\/30\/reasons-for-increasing-talk-tax-incomprehensible\/","title":{"rendered":"Reasons for increasing &#8216;talk tax&#8217; incomprehensible"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>A member of Parliament\u2019s Communications Committee, Sam Nartey George has urged Ghanaians to reject the reasons for the recently announced increase in \u201ctalk tax.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to him, the explanations provided for the upward adjustment in the Communication Service Tax (CST) are baseless.<\/p>\n<p>Sam George was responding to the Deputy Communications Minister, Vincent Sowah Odotei in a post-budget interview with <strong>Citi News\u2019<\/strong> Umaru Sanda Amadu in Parliament on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>This was after the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta had presented the 2019 budget review to Parliament where he announced the increment of the communication service tax from 6% to 9%.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe Minister of Communications pledged that the Ministry was going to take policy directions to tackle the high cost of data and voice calls in Ghana. Now, you have the Minister sit in a cabinet to agree to this increase. I don\u2019t understand how this increase in CST will cause a drop in data. The Deputy Communications Minister stands here and makes a spirited argument on the back of what the Finance Minister said.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Cyber Security Authority is just a bureaucracy. As we speak, the Minister cannot tell Ghanaians that we do not have Cyber Security Architecture in this country. We do [have] except that maybe he doesn\u2019t know what is going on in his ministry. There is a National Security Advisor on Cyber matters,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Mr. Odotei also made a strong case for the government\u2019s plan to charge more for the CST tax saying that more revenue will be raked in to obtain a robust telecommunication system.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cWe need to look for other means to protect data in our cyberspace. Because, if we don\u2019t do anything, the consequences will be very dire.\u00a0 We are in the middle of setting a whole National Cyber Security Authority as a regulator to make sure that our network and data and digital ecosystem is secured. This requires an amount of money\u201d, he noted.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Government has announced that it is increasing the communication service tax as a means to create a viable technology ecosystem in the country.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cGovernment proposes to increase the tax to nine percent to develop the foundation for the creation of a viable technology ecosystem in the country. This will comprise amongst others putting in systems to identify and combat cybercrime, protect users of information technology and combat money laundering and other financial crimes. The increase will not be earmarked, however, the sharing ratio will be adjusted in such a manner that the national youth employment programmes continue to receive the same proportions as they are currently receiving,\u201d the\u00a0 Finance Minister\u00a0 has said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The talk tax which was introduced in 2008 is charged on the use of communication services in the country including voice calls.<\/p>\n<p>Data from the Ministry of Finance showed that in 2018, the government accrued GH\u00a2420 million from the tax.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A member of Parliament\u2019s Communications Committee, Sam Nartey George has urged Ghanaians to reject the reasons for the recently announced increase in \u201ctalk tax.\u201d According to him, the explanations provided for the upward adjustment in the Communication Service Tax (CST) are baseless. Sam George was responding to the Deputy Communications Minister, Vincent Sowah Odotei in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":667713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-667712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lifestyle"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Reasons for increasing &#039;talk tax&#039; incomprehensible - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2019\/07\/30\/reasons-for-increasing-talk-tax-incomprehensible\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Reasons for increasing &#039;talk tax&#039; incomprehensible - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"A member of Parliament\u2019s Communications Committee, Sam Nartey George has urged Ghanaians to reject the reasons for the recently announced increase in \u201ctalk tax.\u201d According to him, the explanations provided for the upward adjustment in the Communication Service Tax (CST) are baseless. 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