Before the Government went ahead in imposing tax on air time, nobody thought that this activity of making telephone calls and writing E-mail messages had any significant effect apart from getting people to talk to each other. But what it covered was the mobile money factor which is really huge.
Obviously Government knew about the extent of the money being transacted, and it kept the information to itself, until it wanted to get its hands on that money.
Take the example of school fees: the mobile money transacted in this activity alone was more than seven trillion shillings. It would not have been bad if the money from the 1%, or is it 0.5%, tax was meant for development purposes.
But you can bet your last shilling that this money will be stolen as it routes itself through the different government organs that will be its handlers through to the Finance ministry and finally, the Consolidated Fund. Corruption has so infested many of these organs, and no matter of assurance that it will be used for development, will be of any effect.
Many people in these organisations have learnt to tell lies through their teeth, to the extent that no one in the country, or abroad, even in the World Bank and IMF, believes them anymore, when they talk of development. That is why the citizens are up in arms over the so-called 0.5% social media tax.
Georgina Nakayemba, Busega
