Govt tables new Bill as people avoid paying social media tax

Parliament. Government yesterday tabled to Parliament the “Excise Duty (Amendment) Bill, 2018 No. 2” amid public outcry. The new Bill presented by the Finance minister, Mr Matia Kasaija, provides for a 0.5 per cent levy only on withdrawals as opposed to the one per cent that was contained in the principle act.
“An Act to amend the Excise Duty Act, 2014 to limit the taxable Mobile Money transactions to withdrawal and to reduce the duty payable,” stated the Objective of the Bill.
However, Opposition lawmakers championed by Mr Roland Kaginda, the Rukungiri Municipality MP and deputy opposition chief whip, attempted to block the Bill citing absence of the parliamentary sectoral committee.
His argument was that the term of office of Mr Henry Musasizi’s committee expired on June 30, and has no jurisdiction to process the Bill.
“Can we get proper guidance,” Mr Kaginda said, adding: “This is an urgent matter and our people are being taxed with the old unscrupulous law.”
However, the Deputy Speaker, Mr Jacob Oulanyah, said proper procedure will be followed to have the Committee fully constituted. He advised that the new committee will have to consider views from the stakeholders to avoid unprecedented undertakings on legislation.
Although a committee is usually given 45 days to process a Bill and report back to the House, Mr Oulanyah, without stating a specific time frame, said this Bill will have to be processed “expressly given the urgent matters of public concern.”
Meanwhile, according to the findings contained in a report by Whitehead Communications dubbed Uganda Social Media and Mobile Money Taxes Survey which was conducted for three days, two weeks after government effected the tax on July 1, five in every 10 people using social media in the country have defied government and are not paying the newly introduced tax. Instead they are using a virtual private network (VPN) to access the services.
A total of 3,015 people were sampled for the Whitehead Communications questions between July 13 to 16 but only 2,696 responded. At least 96 per cent of the respondents said they had used social media in the last six months which dropped to 85 per cent when the social media tax was introduced.