7 ms·

Wouldn’t it be easier for the government to tax the ISPs and data providers the 202 shillings and let that cost be passed on to the consumer?

shoo 8y ago
Great question! It depends what the goal of the tax is. Is the goal of the tax to raise revenue or to give the state more visibility on how its subjects use social media? If the objective is in fact the latter objective of gaining information, having a small direct tax might be sufficient to cover the costs of setting up a new bureaucracy to more closely monitor the online activities of subjects. In some sense, such a tax would essentially serve the same purpose as the global tax on wealth suggested by Thomas Piketty at the end of "Capital in the 21st Century". Piketty suggested that initially, some countries could decree a very low tax on wealth -- I forget the exact number, but let's say it's a 0.01% annual tax on wealth. This would require setting up all of the bureaucratic apparatus to measure and tax wealth, which as a side effect would produce a huge volume of new information that researchers, policy-makers and regulators could use as inputs to make more informed decisions about future taxation policy or controls for offshore tax evasion, etc. See also James C. Scott's book "Seeing Like a State". Of course, another objective might not be to monitor people but instead simply make it more irritating for subjects to use social media, by requiring them to first get permission from a government bureaucracy. This would discourage people from using mainstream social media and push them into something else (smaller niche services, encrypted chat, coup-d'etat, ...)
jkulubya 8y ago
(Ugandan) I think it’s legal gymnastics. Firstly, this “tax” is officially excise duty on OTT services. Data & voice already attract (heavy) excise duty. So if they tacked it onto your phone bill, it would walk and quack like a hike in excise duty on data and voice plans. Second issue - what if I don’t use any OTT services? But the phone company wants to just add 202/- per day to my bill? (That’s the route a few ISPs have gone down. Waiting for them to be challenged) There are a few other issues, but those are my main suspicions.

shoo 8y ago

Great question! It depends what the goal of the tax is. Is the goal of the tax to raise revenue or to give the state more visibility on how its subjects use social media? If the objective is in fact the latter objective of gaining information, having a small direct tax might be sufficient to cover the costs of setting up a new bureaucracy to more closely monitor the online activities of subjects. In some sense, such a tax would essentially serve the same purpose as the global tax on wealth suggested by Thomas Piketty at the end of "Capital in the 21st Century". Piketty suggested that initially, some countries could decree a very low tax on wealth -- I forget the exact number, but let's say it's a 0.01% annual tax on wealth. This would require setting up all of the bureaucratic apparatus to measure and tax wealth, which as a side effect would produce a huge volume of new information that researchers, policy-makers and regulators could use as inputs to make more informed decisions about future taxation policy or controls for offshore tax evasion, etc. See also James C. Scott's book "Seeing Like a State". Of course, another objective might not be to monitor people but instead simply make it more irritating for subjects to use social media, by requiring them to first get permission from a government bureaucracy. This would discourage people from using mainstream social media and push them into something else (smaller niche services, encrypted chat, coup-d'etat, ...)

jkulubya 8y ago

(Ugandan) I think it’s legal gymnastics. Firstly, this “tax” is officially excise duty on OTT services. Data & voice already attract (heavy) excise duty. So if they tacked it onto your phone bill, it would walk and quack like a hike in excise duty on data and voice plans. Second issue - what if I don’t use any OTT services? But the phone company wants to just add 202/- per day to my bill? (That’s the route a few ISPs have gone down. Waiting for them to be challenged) There are a few other issues, but those are my main suspicions.