Parliament will pay the monthly Shs6, 000 for over-the-top tax (OTT) alias social media tax and Shs30,000 for 5GB data bundles for each of the 458 MPs.
This means Parliament will spend about Shs197.8 million annually on social media tax and data bundles.
Telecom giant, MTN Uganda was handed the contract to provide this monthly data packages to all Members of Parliament on their IPads and also remit their OTT.
The Parliamentary Commission recently embarked on a bidding process to identify the best service provider in which MTN beat Airtel Uganda and Africell who were eliminated at the preliminary stage to emerge the best.
In September 2018 during the debate on the Excise Duty Bill (2018), Obongi County MP Kaps Fungaroo asked Parliament to intervene because they were not accessing social media platforms on their IPads due to rigidities from the service provider.
Fungaroo’s statement faced backlash from the public who anticipated that the MPs could be asking for tax payers’ to foot their OTT tax bills.
However, Moses Bwalatum, the Principal Communication officer at Parliament in a statement released in 2018, refuted the claims saying that, the MP was simply seeking for guidelines on a flexible system to allow MPs load bundles or pay OTT using their iPads.
“MPs are provided iPads by the Parliamentary Commission to facilitate their legislative duties. In a move to cut costs on expenses incurred on printing bulky reports, statements, and other communication, all Parliament reports/documents are uploaded onto their iPads. This is in line with the move to have a paperless Parliament. The iPads however, remain the property of Parliament. By the nature of the data contract signed with Parliament before the advent of the OTT Tax, it is only the service provider that can load bundles on the MPs iPads,” the statement says.
In July, despite public outcry, legislators introduced the tax on users accessing social media sites including WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook. Social media users subscribe to daily Shs200 tax or Shs1400 for a weekly bundle. Also, tax was introduced on mobile money transactions.
Kyadondo East legislator Robert Kyagulanyi led protests against the tax in downtown in July last year.
In February 2019, Uganda Communications Commission noted internet subscription declined by more than 2.5 million users, while the sum of taxpayers from over-the-top (OTT) media services decreased by more than 1.2 million users.
The value of mobile money transactions also fell by Shs4.5 trillion ($1.2 million) due to the introduction of the tax on mobile money transactions.
