Former Director-General of the National Lottery Authority (NLA), Sammi Awuku, has refuted the government’s claim of abolishing the 10% tax on lottery winnings, calling it a misleading attempt to score political points.
Reacting to the 2025 Budget Statement presented by Finance Minister Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, Awuku argued that the so-called abolition was meaningless since the tax was never enforced under the previous administration.
“After listening to today’s budget presentation, I couldn’t help but notice a rather misleading claim that the government has abolished the 10% lottery tax on winnings,” Awuku stated. “But let’s be honest: how do you abolish a tax that was never implemented?”
He explained that while the tax was initially introduced, extensive consultations with stakeholders—including the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and then-Finance Minister Amin Adam—revealed that enforcing it would negatively impact the lottery sector and unfairly burden players. As a result, the previous government chose not to apply it.
“The truth is, the NPP government had already decided not to impose this tax on Ghanaians because we understood its impact,” he said.
Awuku further clarified the distinction between lottery and betting, emphasizing that the National Lottery Authority operates under the Ministry of Finance, while betting is regulated by the Gaming Commission under the Ministry of the Interior. He suggested that equating the two was a deliberate political move.
“Hon. Amin Adam won’t be wrong to say the betting tax was never collected anyway since the Finance Minister also referred to the 10% on lottery wins as ‘betting tax.’ If that’s what the Finance Minister meant, then it was never implemented even though it was passed in 2023,” he added.
Concluding his remarks, Awuku called for transparency in policymaking, stressing that “Ghanaians deserve honesty, not spin. Policies should be about real impact, not just headlines.”
