Antimonopoly Committee, Association of Enterprise Content Providers of Uzbekistan hold discussions

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- On 29 April 2019, the Antimonopoly Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan held a discussion on the subject of excise taxation of content providers and mobile operators.

The meeting was attended by representatives of the Association of Enterprise Content Providers of Uzbekistan, all mobile operators, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry for the Development of Information Technologies and Communications and the State Tax Committee.

During the discussion, representatives of the Association of Enterprises of Content Providers of Uzbekistan announced that, in accordance with the amendments to Article 229 of the Tax Code of the Republic of Uzbekistan, from 1 January 2019, mobile communication services were subject to excise tax. Excise tax is deducted from the total income received by the mobile operator, which in turn affects the content providers’ income and adversely affects its financial condition.

At the same time, representatives of the Ministry for the Development of Information Technologies and Communications noted that the development of content for SMS distribution by content providers with subsequent transfer to the mobile operator for transfer to consumers is not among the mobile communication services.

At the same time, representatives of mobile operators expressed their opinion regarding the consideration of the issue of avoiding double taxation of part of the income received from the transfer of content to consumers due to the fact that they already pay the excise tax by providing a short number for SMS mailings.

Following the meeting, the Antimonopoly Committee proposed to create a joint working group from among the representatives of these government bodies and market participants and to make a conclusion on the appropriateness of excise taxation of a portion of the income of the mobile operator, received from transferring content to consumers in order to avoid violations of the law and quickly resolve the problem.