Government has agreed to review the progress of
social media tax after two weeks of
implementation.
The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC),
Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) and all
telecom operators met today and agreed to
review the progress and devise a way forward.
A tweet from the official UCC twitter handle
read; “After 2 weeks, the Commission together
with URA uganda, telecoms and Ministry of
Finance will meet to evaluate the progress of
Social Media Tax.”
When asked, Mr Godfrey Mutabazi, the UCC
executive director, confirmed the development.
“Yes, we reached an agreement with URA,
telecom operators and the Finance ministry that
we review the process after two weeks. We are
also exploring other options to make sure the
payment is cheap for the users. However, the
bottom line is that the social media tax will
stay,” Mr Mutabazi said.
He said contrary to the speculation that
everyone has been blocked, it is only those who
have not paid the taxes.
Mr Mutabazi said those who have installed the
VPN services are incurring more costs to install
the services instead of paying the nominal tax.
He also said the regulation is done within
context of government policy and industry
developments.
“As a regulator, we seek to facilitate national
development while protecting consumers and
encouraging fair competition,” the UCC boss
said.
Storm
The introduction of the tax has raised a storm
across the country, with many Ugandans bashing
the government for what they said was a
deliberate move to deny many citizens access to
information.
A section of the public has installed virtual
private network (VPN) services to bypass the
taxes.
Mr Mutabazi had said the commission has
facilities in place to block the VPN services.
However, by press time yesterday, many users
were still using VPN.
It is understood that the commission has now
asked the telecom operators to block access to
VPN, an order that may not be easy to enforce
since the service softwares are on Google store
and windows App.
When asked what progress had been made, Mr
Val Oketcho, the MTN spokesperson, said he was
not privy to any discussions between the UCC and
the telecom operators.
He promised to get back to us, but had not by
press time.
Both Airtel and Africell were not available for

comment.