Government should tax foreign betting companies, not individual bettors – NDC

The NDC has affirmed that it is strongly opposed to the 10% tax on betting and lottery winnings.

In a statement, the National Communications Officer of the party, Sammy Gyamfi, said that their 2020 campaign promise on betting, which he echoed on other platforms, was that the NDC will fund the sports development fund with proceeds from betting tax, as was done in the UK.

The party professed that in the United Kingdom, betting companies are rather “heavily” taxed, not individuals.

“In response to a question on how the NDC intends to fund the Sports Development Fund we promised in our 2020 manifesto, I indicated in the said interview, that that the NDC will consider imposing a tax on sports betting “as it’s done in the UK”. The question every objective mind ought to ask therefore, is what pertains in the UK relative to taxation on sports betting? The answer is simple! In the UK, bet winnings are not taxed. Rather, bet companies are heavily taxed,” Sammy Gyamfi stated.

He argued that although betting is not a desirable practice, it has been necessitated by the teeming unemployment situation and general economic hardship under the NPP, which, he claimed, affected mostly the youth.

“Sports betting although undesirable, has become a necessary evil given the state of hopelessness, joblessness and excruciating hardships that Ghanaian youths have been plunged into by the insensitive and reckless Akufo-Addo/Bawumia/NPP government.”

Sammy Gyamfi furthered that the betting and lottery tax is a “lazy” approach to taxation and breaches the promise of the NPP to move the economy from taxation to production.