Webinar: Impact of social media tax on internet affordability
Date & Time: Wednesday, May 8, 2019, 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM EDT
Please sign up on Eventbrite. Registrants will receive the login information for the webinar.
Many governments across the globe are establishing consumer taxes for over-the-top (OTT) services — including social media apps — as a way to generate revenue in the age of digital economy. This trend is particularly apparent across Sub-Saharan Africa where such taxes were introduced in Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia in 2018.
These taxes represent a barrier to access. Three months after a levy was introduced in Uganda, the Communications Commission reported that the number of internet subscribers had dropped by over 2.5 million users and the value of mobile money transactions fell by fell by 4.5 trillion Ugandan shillings (USD$1.2 million), resulting in reduced economic growth and fewer jobs created in the digital economy.
Join A4AI’s webinar on May 8 to explore the consequences of social media taxation on affordable and meaningful access to the internet. We will discuss the key impacts of taxation and our recommendations for limiting taxes on consumers in the ICT sector.
The webinar will address the following questions:
- How do governments approach fiscal policy in the ICT sector, and what exactly is social media tax?
- What happened in Benin and what was the potential impact of its proposed taxes on mobile broadband affordability?
- What is happening in Uganda and how are citizens challenging the social media tax?
- What influence do social media taxes have on the digital gender gap?
Speakers:
- Christoph Stork, Partner, Research ICT Solutions
- Wakabi Wairagala, Executive Director, Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)
- Dhanaraj Thakur, Research Director, A4AI & Web Foundation
- Eleanor Sarpong, Deputy Director & Policy Lead, A4AI (Moderator)
Questions? Please contact Maiko Nakagaki at maiko.nakagaki@webfoundation.org.
For more updates on our work, follow us on Twitter at @a4a_internet.