Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) has proposed for the abolishment of some non-tax charges on government services like Over the Top Tax (OTT), renewing passports and driving permits.
According to the URA Commissioner General Doris Akol, charges and non-tax charges like OTT have underperformed and the government needs to make changes to eliminate the charges that are under performing.
Akol made these statements while appearing before the Parliamentary Finance Committee on Tuesday morning.
She said: “The story for OTT is different. It was targeted at Shs. 284 billion but we only collected Shs. 49.5 billion. It performed at 17.4% against what was targeted,”
“Some non tax charges on some government services like verifying land titles, renewing passports, driving permits among others should be abolished in order address the tax morale issue in Uganda,” Akol added.
Akol further proposed for the amendment of the Excise Duty Act in respect of the excisable goods and services to provide for mobile data. She proposed amending the Excise Duty Act to make it possible to tax mobile data to counteract OTT evasion.
Akol attributed the avoidance of OTT on a large scale use of Wi-fi in internet covered areas as well as the continued use of VPNs
