Regulatory Governance And Taxation Of E-Commerce In Ghana

Abstract

This study aims to understand the regulatory governance of e-commerce entities and how such businesses are taxed, which is limited to the country Ghana. The study considers the regulators of e-commerce and the other institutions that are linked to obtain their perceptions of the regulatory governance and taxation of e-commerce. The qualitative approach is utilized for this study to enhance the depth of the study. Interviews were conducted to ascertain the views of the regulators. In addition, the perceptions of other institutions like practicing firms and other civil society organizations were gathered by way of interviews to broaden the scope of our understanding of e-commerce in Ghana. A within and across case analysis has been performed on data gathered to identify consistencies or otherwise. An extant synthesis of related literature and a review of the websites of the regulators and their regulations supported the content analysis done in this study to understand the concept of regulatory governance and the nature of regulatory governance and taxation of e-commerce in Ghana. Results indicate varied results on the presence of factors supporting regulatory governance in some regulatory institutions, however, this is consistent within and across respondents. Also, results from the taxation of e-commerce indicated the issues in taxing e-commerce and the apparent lack of enforcement of related tax laws, which is primarily because of difficulty in tracing e-commerce entities. In light of the results, some regulatory governance factors should be improved to ensure better regulatory governance. It also brings to the fore the need for revision of tax laws to clearly identify e-commerce entities for tax purposes as there is a growing need to raise more tax revenues in Ghana.