In taxation policy, “incidence” describes where the burdens actually fall (who really pays). You might think the entity with the tax obligation “pays the tax.” That often is not the case.
Businesses, for example, consider taxes part of their operating costs. So any entity taxes really are collected from their customers, and simply forwarded to the government.
In many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, taxation represents a truly-significant cost of doing business, a study by GSMA suggests.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than 420 million people (43 per cent of the population) subscribed to a mobile service at the end of 2016; but the region faces a significant digital divide with only 26 per cent of the population subscribed to a mobile internet service at the end of 2016
In 2015, the mobile sector paid, on average, 35 percent of its revenues in the form of taxes, regulatory fees and other charges in the 12 Sub-Saharan African countries for which this data is available. Around 26 per cent of the taxes and fees paid by the mobile industry related to sector-specific taxation rather than broad-based taxation
For 27 countries in the region where data is available, the total cost of mobile ownership (TCMO) for purchasing a handset and 500 MB of data per month represents, on average, 10 percent of monthly income, well above the five percent threshold recommended by the UN Broadband Commission;
Taxation is part of the business model, and part of the cost of using mobile communications.
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