Uganda’s Government to Implement Social Media Tax in July

The Ugandan Government has announced a social media tax set to take effect from July 2018.

According to Uganda’s government, the social media tax is an avenue to raise the country’s revenue and support national security.

According to  Matia Kasaija, Uganda’s Minister of Finance,  “We’re looking for money to maintain the security of the country and extend electricity so that you people can enjoy more of social media, more often, more frequently.”

According to Kasaija, the social media tax which will be levied on every mobile phone subscriber in Uganda who uses platforms such as WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook, will amount to 200 Ugandan shillings (approximately $0.027) per day. How the tax will be charged, that’s if the government goes ahead to implement it, is not clear and will likely be a complex task as they would need to monitor every app installed on each of the country’s 23,6 million mobile phone subscribers.

To many in Uganda, the social media tax doesn’t come as a surprise owing largely to how the government previously shut down social media during the elections.

According to Iafrikan, President Yoweri Jaguta Museveni has also recently hinted that his government would likely introduce some taxes to discourage the country’s citizens from using social media to spread rumors.

This latest development in Uganda follows after another eastern African country’s (Tanzania) signed law to regulate the social media . Tanzania’s new social media and blogging regulation requires all online content creators to initially pay approximately $900 in registration and license fees.