“Best student loans” is a very frequent subject for students who desire to continue their studies and aim to a superior level – academic education. The expenses for university education should not be at all neglected, cumulated expenses usually make impressive amounts of money but this is not an impediment for students who attempt to finish their education and to enlarge their professional chances. Federal government have created particular applications with the intention to assist the students who can not manage to pay for their studies as they do not possess significant amounts of money at the time.These loans can take different types, most common and easy to get to are federal loans and private loans. A derived type of loans deals with students’ necessities, it is a different federal loan and it concerns other eligibility standards. Students are supposed to examine each category in order to obtain the best students loans. In order for them to be offered the best loans, students are required to verify every category.a) Federal loans can take various forms, according to students needs. Many students and parents insist to catalog federal loans as the best student loans.
Stafford loans have an extremely large accessibility. A major part of the students meet the conditions to submit an application for this type of loan. Stafford loans can fall too under two other categories. They may be provided by the government or by any private lender (most of the time private banks). One more criterion to differentiate Stafford loans is the interest cost. There are two other categories of student loans – Subsidized loans, and the interest is paid by the government, and unsubsidized loans – when the student pays the costs. These are definitely some of the most suitable student loans, you are given such loans if you fulfill certain eligibility standards.Perkins loans are configured to encourage students with financial problems and they are the most useful from the best student loans. Even if you may identify them as “best student loans”, compared to Stafford loans, their applicability criteria are correlated to the financial situation of the applicants.b) Private loans are satisfactory alternatives to the monetary restrictions settled by federal loans, as long as federal assistance could not ensure the total cost for education expenditures. You should first take a careful look at the conditions ought to be met by these loans, as the interest rate is much higher and you can not obtain a grace period that federal loans may provide.c) Parental loans are referred to the help parents provide to their children in the final step of their academic life. If they possess the necessary funds to co-finance the costs academic education requires they should also meet some conditions. The most common one is credit check. Not so frequently categorized as “best student loans”, parental loans may represent an alternative for parents to help their children.Every student meets certain demands at some stage in their studies or after finishing their studies and best student loans are a advantageous solution for the financial section. One thing to keep in mind, they make part of a tax system that is exclusively created to offer the same opportunities to all students who are willing to get to the academic stage in education. Inform on private or federal options and decide on a few best student loans and decide whether or not you fulfill eligibility criteria.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

Mobile Banking is a service provided by a bank or other financial institution that allows its customers to conduct financial transactions remotely using a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet.

Electronic Transaction Levy or “E-Levy” is a tax applied on transactions made on electronic or digital platforms.

ADVANTAGES OF MOBILE BANKING

Mobile banking offers numerous benefits such as ease of transaction, convenience, time-saving, managing your finances, and budgeting. Some advantages of Mobile Banking in remote areas include:

Financial Inclusion — mobile banking offers convenient and easy banking services to people in remote areas. Thus, it allows banking on the go and offers all benefits of a banking system to rural areas without the presence of a financial institution.

Accessing the bank 24/7 — Mobile banking provides ubiquitous banking services without the need to visit the bank to have access to services. This offers time to benefit and ease of transacting at a distance.

Cost-benefit — Mobile banking saves the banks the cost of building physical infrastructures (branches) and maintaining branches and staff. Also, reduced costs on the customer side since the burden of visiting the bank for services is eliminated.

Improving resilience in the face of poverty — Mobile money acts as both a savings vehicle and a means of transferring funds during times of economic or environmental shocks.

Strengthening the formal economy — For many micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), opening a mobile money account can facilitate access to formal financial services. Mobile money is well placed to address the issue of informality that blights many developing economies and hampers domestic resource mobilization efforts. Mobile Money enables ease of transacting, thus increasing business profits for MSMEs.

Facilitating economic growth — Mobile money has been shown to contribute to economic growth by increasing both productivity and per capita incomes

DISADVANTAGES OF E-LEVY ON MOBILE BANKING

The design of mobile money taxation policy appears to be the antithesis of a well-designed tax system. The disadvantages include:

Inequity — Mobile money taxes as currently structured to create inequity in the tax system. As the tax is mostly borne by the poor and users of the services are subject to additional taxation (unlike bank or cash transactions), the principles of both horizontal and vertical equity in the tax system are contravened.

Uncertainty -. Uncertainty and lack of transparency over taxation systems can have a direct impact on the operations of the tax authority, increasing enforcement costs, as well as discouraging investment.

Inconvenience — The administration of mobile money transaction taxes creates an inconvenience for MMPs who must calculate and collect the tax on the revenue authority’s behalf. There is an additional inconvenience for users of the service for whom remote digital transactions become more expensive or out of reach if they revert back to cash.

Inefficiency — Badly designed mobile money taxes have been shown to have a distortionary impact on demand for mobile money services. This in turn has had negative impacts on overall tax takes, as well as impacting the attainment of national economic and development goals.

EFFECT OF MOBILE BANKING — CASE STUDIES

The decision to impose taxes on mobile bank transactions will trigger so many problems.

Ghana — According to The Fourth Estate Ghana; Although the government projects a 24% decline in transactions when the levy is finally implemented, preliminary findings published by the bank of Ghana indicate the value of mobile money transactions had dropped by 3.2 billion in December 2021, less than 2 months after the proposal to introduce E-levy.

Uganda — An e-levy of 1% introduced in 2018 has led to an overall drop in the person-to-person transaction by more than 50%, and a 24% drop in industry transactions within the same year the tax was introduced according to a report by Global system for mobile communication (GSMA).

Congo — An e-levy of 1% was introduced in 2019. The government had to reverse the tax on cash outs only due to negative results of the levy on Mobile money users such as a decline in mobile money agents (unemployment) and high-value withdrawals by people.

Other countries include Benin (5%) and Cameroun (0.2%). In all these countries, the e-levy has imposed a negative effect on the economy and people. If we want to ensure the financial inclusion of people in rural areas, we need to ensure that we encourage mobile banking by withdrawing the e-levy tax.

Reference:

https://thefourthestategh.com/2022/03/16/e-levy-this-is-what-happened-when-other-african-countries-passed-it/

Purohit, S., & Arora, R. (2021). The benefits and challenges of mobile banking at the Bottom of the pyramid. Journal of Contemporary Issues in Business and Government Vol, 27(1).

Charles G. Kpan, Jr. is an Information Technologist with over 5 years of experience in the provision of Information Technology Services and an emphasis on Web Development and Visual Branding. He’s the managing Director of CYGEC IT SOLUTIONS INC. and holds a bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology from Blue Crest University, Liberia.