Tuesday, 3 July 2018

Tax burden on the use of social media

What I read

In "Anger at Uganda's tax on social media"(2018) says that some Ugandans are unhappy with taxation on using social media. They have to pay 200 Uganda Shilling [$0.05, £0.04, ฿1.71] tax on social networking services. According to the member of Uganda’s government, the use of social media became taxable by the reason that the government wants to control negative criticism and this kind of levy could be the new source of state revenue which the government will use for public interest. However, the opponents believed that the new tax law is enacted for the only reason to limit their freedom of expression.

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My response 

From my viewpoint, imposing tax on the use of social network indirectly limits the right of Uganda’s netizens because the country’s GDP per capita is about $662.1(2016) [฿21,969.31] and the yearly minimum wage is around $95 [฿3,154.66]. How can the Ugandans afford to pay the price?  We may think that ฿1.71 tax is a small amount of money which anyone in our country could afford to pay, but for Ugandans, I think that is really hardship. In addition, internet access is human rights, so no one in Uganda should struggle with using social media.


As some say that, this tax legislation could help the country boost state revenue. I strongly disagree with this statement because there are several sources of incomes which collected as the state’s revenue such as personal income tax, corporate income tax, customs duty, VAT, excise tax and so on. It is unfair to impose any burden on the use of social media because anyone can use it for free.  
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My question

Should government control the internet?

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Reference

3 comments:

  1. First of all, this news is really new to me, thank you for sharing this interesting one on the blog. For the question that you have asked above, I think that action of Uganda government is a sign of deprivation of the right of people in Uganda so I think that the government should not do that to their people. This is true because every individual should have freedoms to do whatever they want as long as it is not harmful to someone else, and I personally respect every action of any person that does not offend another because I think that every people has their own reasons that results in different actions. Thus, the reason of the action taken, which given by the Uganda government, that they want to limit the negative criticism is unjust to me because everyone has rights to to do everything they need as long as it is legal. Moreover, the government should listen to criticism of their people and take it as a suggestion to improve the way they govern that country to meet people's need.

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  2. I think using social network and internet access would be useful for people in the country, we can use it for education, knowledge,health care, career or seeing what in the world is going on, etc. Everything has both positive and negative parts, for me, it would be better to have free access to the internet. And if it is about the rights, freedom of speech is the basic right in democracy.

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  3. I don't think this is to limit people's expression. People who are willing to pay what is required can still use the social media and post whatever they want. It is just a way the government see as another source of income. Perhaps, other type of tax might generate limited income since the country is poor, if I'm not mistaken. Theoretically, those money the country receive will be allocated to help improve citizen's lives in one way or another. If the Uganda's government impose the tax and its people still want to use, these people will just have to hope the money they pay will somehow benefit them.

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