The tax that ran for two years

Both directions are a trap

A Ghanaian betting page can get the tax question wrong twice over, and most of them manage at least one.

Saying winnings are taxed is wrong today. The withholding was repealed on 2 April 2025 and a licensed operator pays out in full now.

Saying Ghanaian winnings have always been untaxed is also wrong, and it is the worse error because it is confident. A ten per cent withholding on gross winnings ran from 2023 until that repeal date. A reader who last placed a bet in 2024 had it taken, remembers it being taken, and is entitled not to be told it never happened.

Gross, not net

The detail that made the old rule bite was that it applied to gross winnings rather than to net. A punter who staked and won and staked again and lost paid on the winning ticket without any offset for the losing one. That is a much heavier charge than ten per cent of a profit, and it is why the repeal was argued for as hard as it was.

A separate charge on gaming revenue remains and it is an operator obligation. It does not come out of what a punter receives and should not be described as a tax on winnings, which is a different thing collected from a different party.

The rule this almanac follows

Any sentence on this site about tax on winnings carries the repeal date in the same sentence or the one next to it. Not as a footnote and not as a link. A statement about a reader’s money that is true only from a date they cannot see is a statement that will be misread by exactly the people who remember the old rule.

The same applies to the transfer levy on mobile money, which followed a similar arc and is also gone. The money page carries both, with their dates.