Social media tax aliased as Over the Top tax (OTT) was introduced 10 months ago on 1st July as Uganda’s GDP spicer micing a UGX 200 coin per user willing to access any of the taxed social media platforms. The after month of this announcement saw politicians and netizens protest against the tax by signing online petitions and taking it to the streets together with a charges in court against the new tax.
While VPNs became the ultimate saviors from OTT tax with maximum downloads detected on smartphones to a point that UCC instructed service providers to put a stop to this. Protesters never stopped airing their views about the tax and its to this that a stronghold opposition politician Hon Robert Kyagulanyi alias Bobi Wine will be answering charges related to the protests against social media tax in Uganda.
Well, does this mean all social media tax protesters will face the dock to answer charges of protesting against a GDP spicer? Yes/No the great question of the day would lie back to the legislators who previously bowed to the 0.5% mobile money tax sequence.
So, as court will soon make its ruling on the new social media tax charges, the arrest means UCC’s take on OTT tax violaters would see everyone bypassing it with VPNs facing the same dock. Henceforth, the results of social media tax in Uganda seem to be boiling from a partially filled pot proving a point of erasing the free Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter dreams from the Ugandan timeline.