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Sunday, 26 September 2021

Last Night’s Talk Shows on the blogger tax + GERD

Newly announced taxes on online content creators headlined last night’s talk shows. YouTubers, Instagrammers, bloggers, vloggers and other online content creators will have to start paying income tax under a directive from the Tax Authority over the weekend designed to crack down on online tax evasion.

The tax is not being imposed through new legislation but is already afforded under the 2005 tax act, which stipulates that all income must be taxed, the Tax Authority’s e-commerce head, Sayed Saqr, said in a phone call with Alaa Mas’ouleety’s Ahmed Moussa (watch, runtime: 15:33).

And that’s not all: Creators who make more than EGP 500k a year will be required to charge VAT on any services offered via their channels (think: endorsements, sponsored content and host-read ads). All creators will need to register for VAT regardless of their income, Saqr said.

The taxman is watching: “We have a protocol with the Communications Ministry that allows us to obtain sufficient data about people who trade online, and we are in constant contact with very important platforms for information about the people who deal on them,” the director-general of the Tax Authority’s technical office, Talaat Abdel Salam, told Al Hayah Al Youm’s Lubna Asal (watch, runtime: 13:59). Kelma Akhira (watch, runtime: 10:02) and Sada El Balad’s Salet El Tahrir (watch, runtime: 14:40) also had coverage of the story.

No date has yet been fixed for a return to GERD negotiations, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told Kelma Akhira’s Lamees El Hadidi (watch, runtime: 12:02) in a call from the UN General Assembly in New York. He said he had stressed Egypt's desire to reach a binding legal agreement on the dam, despite Ethiopian intransigence, in meetings with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and UN Secretary-General António Guterres, adding that Egypt has put its trust in current AU chair, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to resume negotiations. Shoukry said the ministry was evaluating a document sent by the Congolese foreign ministry to the three negotiating parties on restarting the talks.

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