Uganda President Yoweri Museveni Imposes Taxes on Social Media Users in a Bid to Stop 'Gossip'

Ugandan citizens will now be taxed to use social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and Skype in President Yoweri Museveni's latest bid to stop what he termed as lugambo (gossip).

Internet users, human rights defenders and opposition leaders have opposed the new tax proposals describing the as “diversionary, deceptive, injurious to individual freedoms and burdensome”.

The new taxes were confirmed Uganda's Minister of Finance Matia Kasaija, Secretary to Treasury Keith Muhakanizi and State House officials.

In a letter to Kasaija dated March 12th, President Museveni said he hopes to generate between Sh400 billion and Sh1.4 trillion in taxes from social media users per year.

“I am not going to propose a tax on internet use for educational, research or reference purposes... these must remain free,” Mr Museveni wrote.

“However, olugambo on social media (opinions, prejudices, insults, friendly chats) and advertisements by Google and I do not know who else must pay tax because we need resources to cope with the consequences of their lugambo.”

Museveni added: “If we were to introduce a small fee of Uganda Sh100 per day from sim-cards that are used by these OTTs, that would generate about Sh400 billion additional revenue.”

Kasaija said the orders in the president’s letter are “a Cabinet directive” and the details will be contained in the new tax bills to Parliament.

Mobile service providers led by MTN general manager of corporate service Anthony Katamba said the new taxes would amount to double taxation.

“The data you buy gives you internet. So taxing social media is a taxing content,” Mr Katamba said, adding that if government goes ahead to implement the proposed tax, “it would be unprecedented.”