CSPS Seminar on "Taxing Times: Post-Covid Recovery, Citizen-State Relations, and the Electronic Transactions Levy (E-Levy) Controversy in Ghana"

To raise the country's tax-to-Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio and help balance its budget, the Government of Ghana has since 2021 introduced more than ten new taxes. Among these policies, the Electronic Transactions Levy (e-levy), which imposed a tax on mobile money (momo) transactions over a GHS100 daily threshold, has been the most contentious. The E-levy controversy provides an opportunity to contribute to ongoing discussions about the prospects of leveraging crisis-induced solidarity to boost revenue mobilisation. Drawing on in-depth interviews with a diverse set of respondents, we explore citizens' responses to the government's revenue mobilisation efforts and observe that the tax bargaining process failed to elicit consent for the E-levy.