By Franklin Draku
Government has agreed to review the progress of social media tax after two weeks of implementation.
This follows a meeting between the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), Uganda Revenue Authority and all telecom operators on Monday where they agreed to review progress and decide the way forward.
A tweet message from the official UCC twitter account reads that after 2 weeks, the commission together with the Uganda Revenue Authority, telecom companies and the Ministry of Finance will meet to evaluate the progress of social media tax.
The commission’s executive director Godfrey Mutabaazi says they are also exploring other options to make sure the payment is made convenient and less burdensome for the users, emphasizing that the controversial tax will stay.
Mutabaazi meanwhile says the commission has put in place facilities to block the Virtual Private Network (VPN) which many Ugandans have installed on their phones to avoid this tax.
VPN is a network that is constructed using public wires, usually the Internet to connect remote users or regional offices to a company’s private, internal network.