Fact checks revealed that Ursula Owusu lied about 10% UK tax
Minority opposes E-Levy
Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa, Sulemana Braimah has tagged Ursula Owusu’s defence of fact check reports as a “mind-boggling logic of semantics”.
The Minister for Communications and Digitalization, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, last week said Ghana’s rate for the e-levy is below 2% and very low as compared to other countries like the UK which pays 2%.
This comment generated a lot of uproar among Ghanaians as they say, her comments were insensitive to the plight of Ghanaians who do not get the same benefits from taxes as compared to the UK.
Fact-checking her claim, it was reported that the 10% UK tax was not true.
The Minister has, however, taken to her social media to defend her position saying, “Up to 10%´ means anything between 0-10%. It does not mean 10%. The UK’s 2% DST falls within this range. So, who is lying or ignorant?????
Will the fact-checkers, commentators and hangers-on be gracious enough to admit that they got it wrong AGAIN?? I doubt it so not holding my breath”, she added.
Reacting to this the MFWA boss wrote on Twitter, “Ursula Owusu claimed that some countries such as the UK are charging up to 10% digital tax. When @factcheck_ghana exposed her claim as completely false, guess what she says? That when she said "up to 10%" she meant from 0% to 10%. So, if UK tax on companies is 2%, she was not wrong."
He continued in a separate tweet saying, “According to our Minister of Communications, @UrsulaOw it will be correct to say that Ghana's proposed E-Levy is up to 10% since 1.75% is within the range of 0% to 10%. What a mind-boggling logic of semantics”.
However, the E-Levy will be submitted to parliament on February 1, for approval after minority caucus in parliament have kicked against it since its announcement in the 2022 budget.
Check the tweets below:
Executive Director of the Media foundation for West Africa, Sulemana Braimah