The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Puzzled by difficulty of taxing the digital economy, African revenue collectors will sit in Kampala next month to discuss how best they can squeeze revenue from the business that run mostly on the internet.
Through their umbrella African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF), the leaders from tax collection bodies of 38 countries in Africa will focus on digital economy. The meeting will take place on November 18, 2019, and will be hosted by Uganda Revenue Authority.
Stella Nyapendi, the country leader for ATAF in Uganda, said on Thursday that so much business was happening online but tax bodies have not matched up the strategies to get revenue from them which could be costing countries tens of billions.
Uganda is one of the pioneers that have made an attempt to tax online activities through the Over the top (OTT) services tax imposed in the 2018/19 financial year.
The country has had a challenge with more people avoiding to pay the tax by using virtual private networks (VPN).
In July, URA Commissioner General Doris Akol said the tax body only collected 49.5 billion out of the targeted 284 billion Shillings on OTT. This means URA was unable to collect 234 billion from this tax measure, a shortfall of 83 per cent from the estimates.
Also, according to Nyapendi said there are companies making money here like Google, Facebook itself, Twitter, among others making money here but can’t be taxed.
These companies turnover billions of dollars in revenue but countries where they earn this money earn nothing. Nyapendi says ATAF wants to see individual countries shower up their revenue collections.
ATAF will be celebrating its tenth anniversary.
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