A Financial Analysis of Mobile Money Services
With limited reporting by mobile network operators (“MNOs”) on the financial performance of mobile money businesses, the paper develops a financial reporting framework to indentify (and quantify) operating costs associated with delivering mobile financial services to unbanked populations in emerging markets. The framework is based on a review of relevant literature and an analysis of the financial reporting of conventional money transfer businesses.
Taxation of the Telecommunications Sector: A Focus on Policy Issues and Considerations in Taxation of Mobile Money in Uganda
With the growth of the telecommunications sector in Uganda has come the emergence of a vibrant sub-sector, mobile money (transfer of money through mobile phones). This service enables almost instant sending and receiving of money across the country and with some operators even out of the country. Today, the service has almost 20 million subscribers in Uganda and 39 percent of the country’s GDP moves through this service. In 2013, Local Excise Duty on money transfer at 10 percent was introduced as an attempt by the country’s tax body to tap into this lucrative sector and indirectly reach the ever burgeoning but elusive informal sector. This tax however has been condemned as distortionary of the industry, regressive in its incidence and part of the general discriminatory nature of the taxes against the telecommunications industry in Africa. This research seeks to assess the exact nature of this tax, its impact on the mobile money service as an industry and make recommendations on how it can be improved.
Bentham's Equality-Sensitive Utilitarianism
Rosen argues that Bentham's utilitarian doctrine was sensitive to distributive concerns and would not countenance sacrifice of fundamental individual interests for aggregate gains in happiness in society. This essay seeks to extend and deepen Rosen's argument. It is argued that Bentham's equality-sensitive principle of utility is an expression of an individualist conception of human happiness which contrasts sharply with the orthodox utilitarian abstract conception. Evidence for this interpretation of the basic motivation of Bentham's doctrine is drawn from his view of the relationship between happiness and expectations, from various expressions of his ‘each to count for one’ formula, and from his reformulations of the principle of utility itself late in his career.