'There's money online': Okraku-Mantey on YouTube tax proposal (WATCH)

The Deputy Minister for Tourism has suggested that the government after its successful passage of the E-Levy bill must consider means to collect tax from Ghanaian YouTubers and others who make revenue from online businesses.

“My creative people are selling on YouTube, iTunes, bolt foods, uber, people are now buying clothes online, are they paying anything to the government? No, I think after the momo I think we need to go heavily online and then cyber to see what we can get from there,” he said.

Defending his comment during an interview on Daybreak Hitz on Hitz FM, Mr Okraku-Mantey said the focus shouldn’t be just on YouTube and blogging sites but rather on every individual or entity making income on the internet.

"My job is to get you to start the conversation. If you are doing blogging for fun no one will tax you. But if you are doing advertisement and taking money then we have to tax it. I don’t want to limit it to blog only. It is generally e-commerce. It is bigger than blogging and YouTube," he said.

He continued that "I am not sure the GRA is specialised in the eCommerce space yet. They will have to do more work on that. Even if we decide not to look at it, the opposition has shown interest. Almost all my jobs on YouTube I didn’t put it there. It is someone else and the person who has stolen it is not paying tax"

According to the Deputy Minister, "there is a lot of money in the e-commerce space, especially now when we are not selling in the geographic space. When GRA gets to that stage they will engage and all will be done. I am not a tax expert… there are people who are experts. I am just to prompt you that it exists".

Watch the video below to hear from him.