The Mobile Money Agents Association has urged agents around the nation to follow the government's 1.5 percent rule, which will go into effect on Sunday, May 1, 2022.
The Association asked its members to continue educating the general public about the new tax plan, saying it will "help restore trust in and continued use of the platform to facilitate all financial activities."
Deposits, withdrawals/cashouts, and savings on momo wallets would not be affected by the new tax policy, according to the statement published by the Associations' General Secretary, Evans Otumfou.
"Agents have no hand in e-levy charges or collection," the Association added, "therefore consumers are not to pay any e-levy costs to Agents."
Finally, the Association asked its members to guarantee that the policy is implemented smoothly, as it works to protect their interests.
"Management recognizes the long-standing issues that Agents face in the company and will make efforts to address them as soon as the e-levy debate is resolved."
The statement concluded, "We urge the government to enhance education on the e-levy scope through a countrywide in-person engagement."
Meanwhile, the Ghana Revenue Authority has declared that the E-levy would be operationalized in a modified-phased method beginning May 1.
This is based on the findings of a GRA assessment of the general preparedness of selected charging entities to connect with the E-Levy management system.
The Authority's intention to completely deploy the E-levy by May 1 has hit a roadblock as a result of the new development.
Despite the Authority's claims to the contrary, Ningo-Prampram MP Sam George Nartey claimed earlier this week that the Authority was not ready to apply the Electronic Transaction Levy (E-levy).
Processes that will assure the efficient implementation of the contentious tax, he claims, have yet to be finished.
The Application Programming Interface (API) and security architecture have not yet been made accessible to telecom providers, according to the Ningo-Prampram MP (Telcos).
"I have it on good authority that the GRA Commissioner-statement General's that all APIs have been issued to all Electronic Money Issuers (EMI) as of 11 p.m. last night (Wednesday) is inaccurate. "At least two APIs have still to be completed," he stated.
"The reverse API is the more important of the two. The GRA recognized during the latest technical conference that because all of the system's robustness testing has not been completed, there is a risk of downtime when calling the API to do all of the checks.
He stated that when such a circumstance happens, GRA has opted to "go ahead and apply the tax, even if that transaction is exempt," and then "perform a reconciliation and then reverse the 1.5 that was charged" when the system returns online.
He believes that this will cause issues, such as misunderstanding at Mobile money vending machines.
"The message has gone out that these people are exempt [and] in cases like these, momo agents will be assaulted because customers will accuse them of attempting to steal their 1.5 percent of the money given." So you're exposing the momo agent to potential agents due to a breakdown in communication, " he explained.
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