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New Income Tax in Rwanda Causing Major Financial Strain for Many Mobile Money Agents
More than 7 million Rwandans do their banking through their cellphones, but many of the agents who facilitate the banking transactions never declared their income to the country’s tax authority. Now the tax authority has started taking a 15-percent withholding tax from these agents’ incomes with the cellphone provider, plunging some of these agents into financial turmoil.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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A Big Tax Break for Socially Responsible Investing
Opportunity zones, pushed last year with bipartisan support, were created for a mix of urban, suburban and rural areas. They hark back to plans from the 1980s meant to steer capital into blighted neighborhoods.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- North America
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Zimbabwe to review mobile money tax after backlash
Using official 2017 statistics on total mobile money transaction value, the tax hike increases government takings from the service by almost ten times.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Africans Fear Trend Toward Taxes on Data, Mobile Money
The telecom companies say taxes on mobile payments introduced by a string of countries hurt their revenues and threaten much-needed investment in infrastructure.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Viewpoint: Tax on internet, mobile cash will dim ‘Silicon Savannah’ dream
Kenya is a rising star in ICT and is fondly referred to as the “Silicon Savannah”. ICT exhibits potential to be a key player in turning around an overburdened economy and could even haul Kenya into industrialisation. Over-taxing it is hardly the way to run around the wheel and reinvent growth.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Zimbabwe is hiking mobile money taxes to plug its fiscal deficit, but it could backfire
In a country with a history of cash shortages, multiple currencies and hyperinflation, mobile money had become a key payment alternative. Cash is hardly ever accessible in Zimbabwe as banks frequently run out of monetary notes, leaving mobile money and bank cards as the only transaction options.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Zimbabwe unveils new mobile money tax
Zimbabwe changed the way it taxes mobile money from a fixed fee to a percentage of the value of each transaction, as the state eyes a greater share of the proceeds from use of the burgeoning technology.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Kenyan president proposes tax hike on money transfer services
Kenya’s biggest mobile phone operator Safaricom said in June it is opposed to a proposed tax rise on mobile phone-based transfers, arguing that it would likely mostly hurt the poor, most of whom do not have bank accounts and rely on mobile transfer services such as Safaricom’s M-Pesa.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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