News

On Thursday, September 20, Parliament in Kenya passed the Finance Bill 2018, which included the recommendations of President Uhuru Kenyatta, introducing several new significant tax increases which is in addition to the recent 8%.value added tax (VAT) to be charged on petroleum products including fuel.  New taxes include:

The Bank of Russia, the country's central bank, reported that it had conducted a successful initial coin offering (ICO) test in its regulatory sandbox.

The Deputy Director of the Financial Market Development, Ivan Semagin, had said that while testing had been conducted successfully, many legal issues were extant. Russia launched its regulatory sandbox earlier in 2018 and anticipated conducting a test on technology related to raising of financing through the issuance of an ICO.

The Central Bank of Kenya released data in July which indicated that Kenyans spent in excess of 960 billion Kenyan Shillings on sports betting during the first quarter of 2018.

Mobile network operator (MNO), Airtel, has been reported to have begun providing full 1% refunds on mobile money taxes paid by subscribers in Uganda which was originally collected pursuant to the country's parliament passing of a controversial 1% mobile money tax which was allegedly originally intended to be set at 0.05% and faced substantial opposition in its entirety.