An Assistant Professor of Accounting and Financial Management at the University of Sheffield, Dr. Sharif Mahmud Khalid, has backed calls for the E-levy to be scrapped.
According to him, the E-levy will be counterproductive to the larger digitalization drive of the country.
He advocates that rather than impose levies on electronic transactions, the country should instead use incentives to get people to more people to go digital.
To him, incentives backed digitization efforts will prove useful in the long run, and encourage more individuals to go digital, thereby reducing the digital gap.
‘’We may be leaving laggards behind. As a way of encouragement, incentives are given to people who may not feel that they want to be a part of this digitalization train,’’ he stated.
According to Dr. Sharif Mahmud Khalid, state institutions can use incentives to get more people to pay for their services.
‘‘Let’s say at the DVLA, you are to pay for a service. If you pay at the counter, you pay X amount as charge and if you are paying online, it is free of any charge. This can be an incentive to get everyone as part of the digital agenda,’’ he added.
He warned that once access to electronic transactions and services are taxed, people will find alternative means of either evading or avoiding those services.
‘‘If we are rather discouraging digitalization by taxing it, then that becomes problematic,’’ he charged.
