URA: Uganda Government To Tax Social Media User

Mobile data users have finally been hunted down by Uganda Revenue Authority ( URA ) in a move to tax internet users in the country.^[9]

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URA officials argue that there has been a heavy drop in excise tax fetched from voice calls in the current statics as mobile phones users have resorted to making more internet calls.^[5]

While appearing before the parliamentary finance committee headed by Rubanda west MP Henry Musasizi,^[2] URA officials argued that there is no tax charged against mobile data usage yet there other services associated with it.

Henry Saka,^[6] the commissioner domestic taxes said “This was a policy and issue and they were engaging the ministry of finance to see how soon they can implement this move” ^[9]since all other mobile services have faced taxes but its only Internet that has not been approached for example there is a 12 percent tax on mobile voice calls and a five percent for the fixed lines.^[10] Value added services such as receiving a Ssenga tips or football fixtures faces a 20% tax fee.

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Similarly mobile money faces a 10 percent for both withdraws and sending.^[1] In 2015 MTN Uganda received a 6. 7 percent year on year increase in active mobile financial services (MFS) as well an increase in mobile data users by 17. 4 percent contributing to total telecom revenue 28.3percent.^[12]

The commission is also angry that some telecom companies are promising to double data of their users like MTN and Airtel, Smart telecom and Vodafone are also surviving on selling data.^[9]

At least 12.9 million (37.4%) Ugandans are using internet,^[8] with more than half of these using mobile phones, according to Uganda communications commission (UCC) 2015 report.

With such differences the commission is looking forward to taxing the mobile data users.^[6]

Source: Howwe Bizz

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