The Kenyan government has concluded plans to tax internet access
as the parliament on Thursday, September 20, approved a measure imposing excise
duty on telephone and internet data services, thereby attracting condemnation from Paradigm Initiative. reports ITREALMS.
The President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta left Kenyans surprised by
recently proposing an increase in Internet Tax through the alteration of the Finance Bill 2018. This Bill was earlier
declared illegal by the High Court.
This tax increase comes at a time when subscribers are also
paying increased fee on mobile money transfer services after the government
raised excise duty from 10% to 20% in July 2018.
According to Wathagi Ndungu, Paradigm Initiative’s Google Policy
Fellow for Eastern and Southern Africa, “this action comes after a public
outcry for a reduction on the tax on petroleum products. The president
intimated that revenue had to come from somewhere and the first to suffer are
Internet data services.”
The proposal to parliament by the president read, ‘Telephone and
internet data services shall be charged excise duty at a rate of fifteen
percent of their excisable value.”
“Due to this approval, excise duty will increase on telephone,
Internet data and mobile phone services. Business will be greatly affected
especially small businesses that rely heavily on mobile and Internet money
transfer. Other businesses that will suffer by this tax introduction include
online businesses such as Vlogging, online writing, e-commerce stores,
telemarketing and blogging,” Ndungu added.
What this means is that 100 Kenya shillings worth of
airtime that currently attracts 10 Kenyan shillings tax will now see the
Treasury earn an extra 15 Kenyan shillings. This tax is estimated to affect
over 44.1 million subscribers, going by the figure on mobile subscribers
contained in Communications Authority of Kenya third quarter
report of to March 2018.
“The situation is disappointing since Kenyans are already among
the most heavily taxed income earners in the world without any evidence as to how
they benefit from these heavy taxes,” Ndungu submitted.
Pix: Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyetta
No comments:
Post a Comment