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Ghana's biggest telcommunication industry MTN said it makes at least GH?9.3 million in revenue every day. It says it paid GH?1.218 billion in taxes in 2017.
And after four years, it brings MTN's contribution to a tax kitty at GH?3.515 billion.
But the government does not want to clap - not yet. A pro-government civil soceity group, Progressive National Front is clapping for the government who isn't clapping yet.
Its leader, Richard Nyamah, says "there is no way a serious government will take the telcos for their word."
He observed that when it comes to tax declaration, companies are not saints to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Mr. Nyamah proceeded to list the sins of telcos elsewhere.
Uganda was fined $400 million for tax evasion, and Nigeria coughed up a $5.2 billion fine for failing to comply with a reconnection regulation, he says. MTN faces a $8.5 million fine in Rwanda.
Richard Nyamah pointed out, of all the best foot telcos can put forward, integrity is not one of them.
"Do we have an independent way of verifying the taxes the telcos declare?" Richard Nyamah said and backed the government's plan to pay $89 million in a contract to monitor telcos in the hopes of getting up to $1 billion more.
"Why trust MTN more than your government?" he screamed.
But ?Head of Research and Communications at the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications Derek Laryea expressed sympathy for the telcos. They are being overtaxed already, he said.
These companies have to pay 14 different taxes to government and yet the government suspects it can get more, he complained.
It is like anything telcos try to do to extend their services, government "punishes" them with taxes, Derek Laryea said.
The high taxes on telcos is encouraging SIM Box fraud, a system that tries to make 'expensive' international calls appear like a 'cheap' local call.
Government has been investing money to crack down on this third party illegality but the cost and the rewards are not commensurate, he observed while pointing out that reducing taxes can eliminate the fraud.
Photo L-R Derek Laryea, Selorm Brantie, Richard Nyamah
Derek Laryea also echoed concerns by some telcos that it is worried about privacy of call data which government wants to access.
The world is still reeling from the scandal in which the data of 87 million Facebook subscribers, which was unethically procured and used by a British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica Ltd, aimed to favour a political party.
The CEO of Facebook Mark Zukerberg has been on a begging tour of Europe over the shocking breach. Tthe researcher said the government's plans to hook onto the telcos system to monitor second-by-second calls could lead to a breach of individual privacy.
But Richard Nyamah contended Derek Laryea's suspicion, arguing that if government can breach individual privacy then the telcos as multinational companies could equally make private call records to foreign government, too.
He repeated government's position in that it is in the dark when it comes to the revenue collection operations of telcos.
The Electronic Communications Act is a law to shine the light in this 'dark world of big but silent money', Richard Nyamah indicated and challenged IMANI, a critical policy think-tank which has branded the deal as lacking sense, to go to court if it believes an illegality exists.
But he conceded, the $89m contract to GVG to do revenue assurance is debatable.
If IMANI can show the government how to do this for zero dollars then "hurrary," he said.
The government has a 2018 tax target of GHC39.8 billion on its mind, and telcos is one area where despite the declared taxes, the government habours a desire which the telcos would easily brand Oliver Twist.
President Nana Akufo-Addo in a meeting with CEOs said this government is concerned about revenue losses through illicit financial outflows out of the country, known as capital flight.
He told them government needs to come up with "comprehensive," "intensive" and "effective" ways to tax collection.
"It is time to pay correct taxes" he told the CEOs in Accra and pointed to multinationals in mining and telecommuications.
The renewed push to monitor the revenues of telcos is an attempt to add flesh to the rhetroic as government, which has signalled that the days of acting as a spectator in its own telecommunication space are over.
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