Few months ago, Ugandan government proposed to levy a tax on Social media in the next financial year which came into effect last weekend on Sunday – July 01st 2018, however a section of Uganda citizens have formed a broad coalition to show disagreement on the new Taxation policy for Over The Top platforms (OTT) that include social networking sites such as; Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Hi5, Instagram, SnapChat, Skype among many more social networking Applications.
Uganda Communications Commission together with Telecommunication companies agreed to make Social Media tax compulsory where one has to subscribe with Ugx200 for a day ($0.05, 0.04 euro) or Ug 1,400 weekly and Ugx 6,000 Monthly before accessing any social media platform even when one has already subscribed to a data bundle, however this is not well with Ugandan Smartphone users claiming its double taxation and limitation to communication.
Politicians, Comedians, Clerics, Musicians, Lawyers among other groups have come out to show how unpleasant the tax is.
By Friday last week, most smartphone users had downloaded all types of virtual private networks (VPN) to disguise their local networks and dodge the tax, however UCC suggested people should pay the tax as VPN is much data consuming than the Ugx200 levied.
Kyandondo East MP and Local Musician Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu alias Bobi Wine on Tuesday led other musicians and entertainers to convene a gathering at Hotel Africana in Kampala as he showed dissatisfaction on the new tax saying, ‘’ This is absolutely meant to suck blood out of ordinary Ugandans, at this moment we request the Prime minister as head of Government business in parliament to help us advocate cancelation of Social Media tax in the country, I also request the Rt Hon Speaker of Parliament , Rebecca Kadaga to call all members of the fourth estate to review the motion about social media taxation, if this is not done between now and Friday noon, we will use our rights to call on citizens to show dissatisfaction’’.
President Yoweri Museveni a celebrated twitter user with upto 855,000 followers urged the social media tax imposition earlier this year saying this will end a lot of ongoing gossip locally called Lugambo in native Luganda.
