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Uganda Rolls Out a 5-Cent Daily Tax To Access Social Media (time.com)
The government of Uganda is taxing social media users at a rate of 5 cents per day, which does not include the usual data fees. "The tax on users of sites such as Facebook was first proposed by long-time leader Yoweri Museveni, who complained of online gossip in a March letter that urged finance minister to raise money 'to cope with the consequences,'" reports Time. From the report: Service providers, including regional telecommunications giant MTN, said in a joint statement Sunday that starting July 1 the levy would be charged on "Over The Top services," including access to websites such as Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. The tax will be deducted by service providers that will then pay to the government revenue service. Amnesty International urged Ugandan authorities to scrap the tax, calling it "a clear attempt to undermine the right to freedom of expression" in the East African country. From the social media levy the government hopes to collect about Shs400 billion (about $100 million) in the current financial year.
Uganda be kidding me!
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
Bear in mind that many places in rural Uganda have shops where you can buy phone top ups for the local currency equivalent of 25 cents, 5 cent tax per day is a *massive* tax for a lot of Ugandans.
The tax will be deducted by service providers
I predict that most of the revenue they are expecting will be going to foreign (i.e. non-tax-collecting) VPN providers.
Freedom of expression is being threatened all over the world. Uganda seems like a relatively easy target to center out, but is by no means the biggest offender.
One must first define social media.
Will just charge all accounts and figure out a way to track access to listed sites and then just keep the difference.
;)
Just my 2 cents
Am I the only one who sees a "pay-as-you-go-model" like this as a result of the new privacy restrictions being imposed by the EU and state of California? The model of this story is a tax, but if advertisers can't find their targets and start withdrawing ads, does anyone else think sites like FB or Instagram might use something like this? Just a question.
"Freedom of expression" --> "We need free access to feed you our ads/propaganda"
In the US they ought to charge at least a dollar a minute to compensate you for consuming their bullshit.
to avoid dees tax, my brudda?
This is giving US ISPs a case to stand on for when they decide to charge users for specific services they want to access now that Net Neutrality is gone.
That depends on how you look at it. If they use a firewall to block your connection from being able to access Facebook, Twitter etc. if you don't pay the tax then it's a free privacy upgrade.
To be fair, if tobacco and alcohol are taxed because of the effects they have on society... then social media is no exception, it is just as much of a damaging drug that effects people psychologically. Social media, facebook in particular is damaging to self-esteem, confidence, and general mental health.
It strips your privacy in exchange for a false sense of belonging.
It's not like those Narus machines pay for themselves...
Yes. Starting February 31st 2019, every website on the Internet will collect a 5 cent per hour fee.
So your boyfriend is fat.
Who cares?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
This is a huge tax for them!
"The tax on users of sites such as Facebook was first proposed by long-time leader Yoweri Museveni, who complained of online gossip in a March letter that urged finance minister to raise money 'to cope with the consequences'"
So.... exactly how will the government of Uganda use the revenue raised from the tax to "to cope with the consequences?"
Perhaps to identify those who do not think like the government to "re-educate" them?
...but really you better make that 10 cents, because we both know they'll immediately blow all their food money to feed their twitter addiction otherwise.
How does the government plan to block "social media" for those unwilling to pay the tax? Is it some sort of opt-in thing?
Who decides what qualifies as "social media"? I recall reading somewhere recently that kids are leaving the likes of Facebook for YouTube, of all places. Never in my wildest dreams would I have classified YouTube as social media.
This is about the equivalent of a soda tax.
Both sugar and the internet can make one unhealthy.
One man's vice is another man's revenue stream.
--
"Look on the bright side, it'll be dark soon." -- Midnight Sun
No one watches Facebook's ads. They make all their money fun selling survey data to repressive governments.
I just been on the Air Ministry roof, an it pissin' down wit' rain.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
this is the havoc and dangers they create by moving into your country. Eventually that money will end up in their pockets, and that's not where it needs to be.
Clearly deh know da Wey.
Given that most web pages these days contain links to SM (Facebook, Twitter, ...) often a link to the SM logo or a bit of javascript.
So the person might not knowingly have anything to do with SM but I suspect that their browser downloading these small components will be seen as access to SM and so trigger the day's tax. Now that HTTPS is pervasive it is not possible to determine *what* is being accessed within a web site.
The only way that people are going to be able to avoid this is by installing browser plugins like request policy - which, in itself, is no bad thing.
My brudda, how will you eva find de queen without de social media?
Uganda need to adjust your perceptions.
You have to pay taxes for water, food, shelter, and those things are essential to living. Why not tax some non-essential activity that overall probably has a detrimental effect to a nation's productivity and social cohesion. The vast majority of social media users do not use those platforms for producing or consuming political speech, so AI's complaint is rather thin.
Yeah, I want you to have my babies. I'm jelly, bro.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The mobile cartels lobbied for this to help protect their profits; from another source: "The Ugandan government has implemented a law forcing mobile users to pay taxes to use mobile money and social media apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Skype" ... basically the mobile providers are unhappy that users are able to send messages to each other at very low cost using the data network over FB messenger, WhatsApp, Skype etc., where in the past they used to be able to charge exorbitant rates if those same messages were sent as SMS.
As someone who lives in a US "Blue" state that's rarely seen a tax increase plan that they didn't like, I have to wonder when our tax department will attempt something similar here.
Hell... we already have a 1% "data services" tax on things like Netflix and iCloud, and we are supposed to be paying a "use tax" on any retail sites that aren't currently collecting state income tax on their sales.
I think that they only reason that they haven't tried taxing social media sites next is because most of them are incorporated in states where it would make it more difficult to collect the revenue.
I happen to be a Telecom operator in Uganda and here are some facts:
* The tax is on "over the top" services. Aka, anything you can communicate with outside the telephone system. This includes the typical things, but also includes any app with messaging (I jokingly asked the tax authority if he was going to pay for his Grindr account. Also includes Uber, Skype, etc.)
* The tax was implemented to "stop gossip". Basically, to punish Twitter uses for talking bad about the government... Or to create a small barrier to entry.
* The tax is per device, per location. So my mobile phone that connects to home internet, 4g, and work internet means I have to pay 3 times. If I only use 4g, I pay once.
* We've been commanded to block VPN access through Port blocking. Unless the individual device pays for ott access.
* Corporations must be compliant with operators' requests by providing access to the operator to show monitoring for number of users do they can be charged back.
* We estimate this will generate$1.2b usd in annual revenues. Essentially covering the shortfall in the 2017/18 annual budget. I bet at least 50% will be siphoned away due to corruption.
* Internet is still expensive here. Residential rates are about $200/Mbps. And commercial is about $100/Mbps if you buy 50+Mbps most people buy bundles meaning 1GB for about $0.50.
* The bigger issue is mobile money tax. To receive mobile money (nearly everyone has bank accounts in their phone linked to the telco), you have to pay 0.5% of the transaction. That's in addition to the telco fees and taxes on those. Basically, to deposit/send/withdraw 1m UGX (about$300 usd), it costs about 42k UGX (about $13 usd) due to all of the fees and taxes.
So yeah.