Economist Eddie Cross said Treasury is getting ZWL$300 million per day from the 2 cents tax per dollar on mobile money and electronic financial transactions introduced in October 2018.
Cross made the revelations while speaking at the CEO Africa Roundtable in Harare on Friday.
He also called upon Finance and Economic Development Mthuli Ncube to increase the transactional tax from the current 2% to 5% saying the 2% tax was “nothing”. Cross said:
You know how much we transacted for the past twelve months, we transacted one trillion RTGS dollars electronically, that’s 300 million RTGS dollars per day.
You put a 5% tax, no collection charges whatsoever, you could scrap PAYE, (and) you could scratch corporate tax. You would have to collect anything.
You wouldn’t have accounts to submit to ZIMRA, ZIMRA wouldn’t need 300 000 staff, they wouldn’t need an audit, your PAYE would disappear.
People would earn their income without tax to me everybody wins, quite compelling. Recognise that this is where the world is going and I think it is a welcome development.
Cross is also a member of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) chaired by the central bank’s governor, John Mangudya.