Customise Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorised as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyse the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customised advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyse the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Bettors being taken advantage of by Caeser, or a wise and creative tax policy?

Bettors being taken advantage of by Caeser, or a wise and creative tax policy?

Simply put, taxes are impositions, and they can only be imposed by an Act of Parliament. For this reason, there is the Income Tax Act, 2015 (Act 896) and its most recent revision, the Income Tax (Revision) (No. 2) Act, 2023 (Act 1111).

Bettors being taken advantage of by Caeser, or a wise and creative tax policy?
Bettors being taken advantage of by Caeser, or a wise and creative tax policy?

So what exactly are taxes in the widest sense? Act 896, which deals with charges, and Act 915, which deals with machines, both fail to specify taxation. It is important to remember, though, that the definition of taxation is heavily influenced by what is considered to be income (assessable). Paradoxically, statutes have also circumvented the notion of income.

As a result, taxes is a topic that represents an understudied idea with a hazy definition, unclear borders, and unclear internal organization.
However, taxation is defined as “the imposition or assessment of a tax; the means by which the state obtains the revenue required for its activities” by Black’s Law Dictionary.

It is important to note that Black’s Law Dictionary defines “the imposition or assessment of a tax” as a charge on income, and that income is a factor in determining what will be taxed.

winnings tax

Consequently, it was lawful to exclude taxing “winnings from the lottery” when income was determined using Adams Smith’s definition of income under the prior legislation. Ghana’s tax base was therefore used to Adams Smith’s idea for more than 70 years.

However, the definition of income as of the promulgation and enforcement of the Income Tax Act, 2015 (Act 896) appropriately adopted Haig-Simon’s notion, which includes, among other things, gifts, capital gains, stolen money, and lottery winners.

Referred to as “the assessable income of a person for a year of assessment is the income of that person from any employment, business, or investment,” subsection 1 of Section 3 of Act 896 is based on the Haig-Simon concept. Similarly, subsection 1 of Section 6, which addresses Income from Investment, states that “the income of a person from an investment for a year of assessment is the gains and profits of that person.”

The use of the conjuncture “and” here is a clear departure from subsection one of Section 9 of the now-repealed Internal Revenue Act, 2000 (Act 592), which uses a disjuncture “or” to address what is meant by a person’s income from an investment. Here, the legislature that legislated the Act meant income from any investment (including illegal income).