#2025Budget: NPP’s claim of not implementing betting tax misleading

Former Finance Minister Dr Mohammed Amin Adam has said that his erstwhile NPP government never implemented the betting tax.

According to him, the government never enforced the controversial tax on lottery and sports betting winnings.

He made this claim at a press conference held by the NPP after the Finance Minister, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, presented the 2025 Budget Statement and Economic Policy, in which he announced the abolition of several taxes, including the Betting Tax and E-Levy.

Fact Check Ghana has verified the claim and presents the facts below.

Claim: “Ladies and gentlemen, betting tax that they said they have abolished, we never collected betting tax. We never implement the betting tax so to come and tell Ghanaians that you have abolished something that was not implemented is to deceive the people of Ghana”.

Verdict: Misleading

Explanation:

In March 2023, Ghana’s parliament passed the Income Tax (Amendment) Act, 2023, Act 1094 to replace Income Tax (Amendment) Act, 2015, Act 896. The law introduced, among other things, a “withholding tax rate on the realization of assets and liabilities and winnings from lottery”. The law was assented on April 3, 2023.

In the 2023 mid-year budget review, presented on July 31, 2023, the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta announced the government’s plan to implement the law.

“The implementation of tax on Gross Gaming Revenue has begun, replacing Corporate Income Tax and Value Added Tax on betting, gambling, and other games of chance,” he said.

In August 2023,the Ghana Revenue Authority commenced the implementation of the law. To provide clarity, the GRA published a practice note on the gross gaming revenue (GGR) tax under Income Tax (Amendment) Act, 2015. The note explained lottery operations to cover:

• Sports Betting
• Casinos
• Route Operations
• Remote Interactive Games
• Marketing Promotions
• National Lotto Betting
• Private Lotto Betting
• Other games of chance

While the law recommended withholding tax on many different forms of lottery operations as presented above, Fact-Check Ghana is not able to confirm that the gross gaming revenue tax was indeed enforced on the different forms of lottery.

However, concerning sports betting, there is a lot of evidence proving that individuals who staked were deducted a withholding tax of 10% on their gross winnings. Thus, the withholding tax was applied to the difference between the payout from the betting platform and the amount that was staked. Find below an example of the deduction of the tax.

GRA Commissioner confirms the implementation of the law

In October 2023, Edward Gyambra, the Commissioner in charge of the Domestic Tax Revenue Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, announced that it has generated Gh¢15 million from the implemented bet tax and expressed confidence that the Authority will surpass its revenue targets.

“During the first month of implementation, we averaged GH¢20 million for the GGR. As for the withholding tax, we’ve just started the betting season, but during the lean season, we averaged GH¢15 million. We anticipate this to quadruple by May.”

Further attesting to the fact that the gaming tax was enforced, the two leading presidential candidates, John Mahama and Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, promised to remove the betting tax in their manifestos in the lead up to the 2024 election.

In conclusion, the Former Finance Minister Dr Mohammed Amin Adam’s claim that the betting tax was never implemented is misleading.