Telecoms

The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) for the past few weeks expected some huge chunks of money from telecommunication companies over Government's new 1% on mobile money tax following strong opposition from the payers.

During the orange full times before the Africell take over. Buganda Kingdom had a strong partnerhsip with the then 079 network hosting its services and availing an indeoendnt telecom company. After a long battle with debts together with ups and lows experienced by K2 Telecom. Airtel Uganda has partnerd with Buganda to revive its Telecommunictions company with a switch of codes from 0730 to 0708.

The fate of mobile money tax in Uganda and new adjustments made every now and then fueled in by the president seems to be leading to an activist direction. Mobile money tax plus its brother in law, OTT tax have once again been pronounced alive and active by the state mnister for finance Hon Bahati in a press review about these new taxes. Scrapping off a whole 0.5% on the levied mobile money tax, Telecom companies will now battle with refunds of illegal taxes collected from subscribers as directed by Government.

South African based Telecom company MTN has pushed another step to the much hated OTT tax in Uganda by bocking all Opera affiliated browsers. A few weeks after URA mounted pressure on Telcoms to fulfill the budget mandate of soliciting social media tax. VPNs could soon be no more as a majority are blocked in Uganda.

After a successful 2018/19 budget reading that saw social media and mobile money taxes usher their way into Uganda. The Government has introduced a new policy to tax airtime purchases as all scratch cards now posses a 10% tax increment. Telecom companies in policy notices sent out to vendors clarified the 10% increase as a new tax introduced on July 1st 2018 joining the rugs of social media tax that is now bypassed with various VPNs downloaded

Social media taxes in Uganda are one of a kind and very unavoidable according to a statement by MTN in its FAQs. As Parliament previously approved the said social media taxes, Telecom companies have today backed the idea by releasing the official payment methods to be used when paying social media tax.