By Florence Namuganza

The unanticipated emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic has had organisations including Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) come up with new approaches of reaching audiences with rich simplified information without having to physically engage.

In light of this, URA launched an online studio facility to dubbed URA DRIFT Studio to promote digital tax education while creating awareness of tax responsibilities and rights to boost tax morale. The DRIFT acronym stands for Domestic Revenue Initiatives for Transformation feeding into the larger vision 2040 focus to enhancing domestic revenue mobilisation.

The URA DRIFT TV is intended to educate Ugandan taxpayers about taxes and developments in the tax arena, the economy, good business practices, trade facilitation and more to bring about improved compliance amongst the many clients in Uganda.

While launching the studio the URA CG John R. Musinguzi said that the studio is one of the many ways the institution will reach out to taxpayers. He disclosed plans of having the facility evolve into a standard television facility with 24/7 programs for taxpayer education.

“we shall be using this online platform to reach out to our taxpayers as we wait for a broadcasting license to go live. With targeted tax education, I am sure we shall achieve our target.” asserted Musinguzi

The facility which was built with funding from the European union is a digital communication avenue born out of the opportunity to offer tax education to the ever growing internet savvy Ugandans in real time at a minimal cost by way of our social media platforms with YOUTUBE and Facebook as the driving platforms of choice.

The maiden webinar aired on through the studio was a customs amendment presentation which attracted 1651subscriptions- a promising ground for the facility.

This initiative is part of the numerous tax education initiative devised by URA to reach taxpayers. On the same day, a mobile tax bus was launched to help URA reach remote areas while enabling taxpayers reach services wherever they are.