Today is the day National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani presented Kenya's 2020/2021 budget, which by most accounts, a third of it (sh1 trillion) will disappear into the pockets of individuals.
Netizens, foremost Kenyans on Twitter (KOT) have this evening taken to the social media giant under the hashtag #TaxMadnessKE, to express their dissatisfaction with the government's decision to even think of introducing taxes in the Digital Market place.
The regulations contained in the Digital Market Place Supply, value-added tax (VAT) seeks to collect taxes from online magazines, journals, streaming TV services such as Netflix etc, music, podcasts and online gaming.
“A digital market place supply shall be deemed to have been made in Kenya where the recipient of the supply is in Kenya, the payment proxy including credit card information and bank account details of the recipient of the digital supplies is in Kenya; or the residence proxy including the billing or home address or access proxy including Internet Proxy address, mobile country code of SIM card of the recipient is in Kenya,” says KRA in the proposals.
The proposals are in the public participation stage and most people are encouraged to go and 'shoot it down'.
Most youths depend on the internet for their livelihoods and as such, the proposals have been met with resistance. Here are some of the tweets we sampled:
https://twitter.com/NairobiYac/status/1271085897061105664?s=20 There's already this https://twitter.com/NationBreaking/status/1271073312093896704?s=20 YOUR VOICE IS NEEDED https://twitter.com/Alvinmwangi254/status/1271038457125666817?s=20
