Over-The-Top (OTT) sites were switched off as the government kicked off with the enforcement of social media tax of Shs 200 per day.
A few minutes to midnight (July 01), sites like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter among others, were inaccessible and the option for paying for MTN (*165*2*8#) for example was not active.
Minutes later, the option for paying became available and on entering the above code, one could be directed to pay OTT Tax section with the following fields
MTN Customers: (*165*2*8#)
1) - Buy for your number,
2) - Buy for others,
3) - Africell Tax,
0) - -
The Africell option under the MTN code was not yet active at a few minutes to 2:00AM on July 01, 2018, they promised to work on it shortly.
AIRTEL Customers:
Airtel customers are to follow these steps to pay for their OTT Tax - *185*2*5# and follow the prompts.
AFRICELL Customers
*144*2*5# Africell Money and the *133*6#
More on the social media OTT Tax;
- You can only pay for it via Mobile Money in three options; Daily, Weekly and Monthly some had wished to pay for a year, but that option is not yet available at this time.
- The tax only applies to Over-The-Top sites (OTT) like Viber, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, etc, otherwise, the rest of the sites like Google can still be accessed with your internet bundle.
- No additional charges while paying the OTT tax.
- If you do not wish to access the OTT sites, you don't have to pay the OTT tax.