By Max Patrick Ocaido
Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) has admitted challenges in meeting revenue targets for the Financial Year 2019/20, five months to the end of the financial year.
URA Commissioner General Doris Akol told the committee on finance on Tuesday that the tax body is way below the Shs20.1 trillion revenue target. Akol was leading a delegation from URA to present the authority’s budget framework paper for the coming financial year 2020/21.
In her statement, Akol advised government to make changes in some of its tax policies to eliminate those that are under performing. Among the taxes that URA wants government to abolish is the social media tax, also known as the Over the Top Tax (OTT).
It is nearly two years since government introduced the OTT and its implementation faced resistance from sections of the public who preferred to use Virtual Private Networks (VPN).
Akol told the committee that revenue collection from OTT has suffered much evasion and thus there is need for amendment of the Excise Duty Act and have a policy shift to directly charge OTT on data other than from mobile money.
“We are proposing that parliament amends schedule 2 of the Excise Duty Act to possibly put excise duty on data. This will counteract the effect of OTT, making it a little bit efficient to collect tax on data instead of direct OTT on mobile money which is highly evaded and is not performing well,” Akol said.
The tax on social media was introduced by the executive and passed by parliament in 2018 amid widespread public outcry. The Shs200 daily tax on social media sites; Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp, was introduced following a directive from President Museveni who argued that the tax would cut on the amount of time that Ugandans spend gossiping on social media, and enhance the URA revenue pool.
Akol also wants government to abolish some non-tax charges on some Government services like verifying land titles, renewing passports and driving permits among others.
