You ride in the mornings, you edit photos at weekends, you sell airtime and a bit of stock from the same phone. None of it looks like a job, none of it produces a payslip, and at some point somebody tells you that the Uganda Revenue Authority expects a return from you. That sentence is either true or completely false depending on a single number, and almost nobody tells you which.
Uganda's system for people in exactly this position is unusually clear once you find it. It taxes small businesses on turnover rather than profit, it publishes a scale, and it sets a floor below which no income tax on business earnings is due at all. The rest of this guide is about locating yourself on that scale and meeting the two dates that matter.
If part of the plan is simply to earn more without adding another commute, apps like I am Beezy pay for content you view — videos, articles, adverts — with earnings sent to the mobile wallet you already use for everything else.
Which tax year are you even in?
1 July to 30 June, not January to December
The Ugandan year of income runs from 1 July to 30 June. Every finance measure lands on 1 July: the Income Tax, VAT, Excise Duty, Stamp Duty and Tax Procedures Code amendment acts of 2025 all took effect on 1 July 2025, according to the URA's own summary of direct tax amendments for FY 2025-26.
Get this wrong and everything after it is wrong. Earnings from March belong to the year that closes that June, not to the calendar year you are living in.
Why the deadline falls at the end of December
The filing and payment deadline for the presumptive regime is the last day of the sixth month following the end of the year of income, per the URA's Taxpayer Starter Pack. With a year closing on 30 June, that puts both the return and the payment at the end of December — which is also, unhelpfully, the month with school fees and everything else in it.
Treat December as the date and November as the work. Nothing about the return improves by being started in the last week.
The fifteenth of every month
If you also employ someone, or you are employed, there is a second rhythm. PAYE, withholding tax, VAT, excise duty and gaming tax all fall due on the fifteenth of the following month, and social security contributions to the NSSF are due by the fifteenth as well.
Do you owe anything at all?
The floor almost nobody quotes correctly
Here is the line the whole question turns on. The Uganda Revenue Authority writes in its simplified guide for small business taxpayers that a taxpayer whose gross turnover does not exceed 10 million shillings a year does not pay tax on their income. Not a reduced rate, not a flat fee — nothing under that regime.
Almost every summary you will read describes the presumptive regime as applying "to businesses under 150 million". That is half a sentence. The regime applies to a resident taxpayer whose annual gross turnover from all businesses combined is above 10 million shillings and below 150 million. If your total is under the floor, you are not in it.
The scale above the floor
Above 10 million, the charge depends on your turnover band and on whether you keep records. Records are not a formality here: at the bottom of each band they are worth more than they cost to keep.
The figures below come from the URA's guide for small business taxpayers, volume 1 issue 4 for FY 2023/24, which the authority republished on its site in December 2025, and the direct tax amendments for FY 2025-26 make no change to the regime.
| Annual gross turnover (UGX) | With proper records | Without records |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 10 million | No income tax on business income | No income tax on business income |
| Above 10 up to 30 million | 0.4% of turnover exceeding 10 million | 80,000 flat |
| Above 30 up to 50 million | 80,000 + 0.5% of the excess over 30 million | 200,000 flat |
| Above 50 up to 80 million | 180,000 + 0.6% of the excess over 50 million | 400,000 flat |
| Above 80 up to 150 million | 360,000 + 0.7% of the excess over 80 million | 900,000 flat |
Working it through on a real total
Take someone whose takings across a full year come to 24 million shillings: riding, weekend editing and a small stock line, all added together. That is above the floor, so the regime applies. In the 10-to-30 million band with proper records, the charge is 0.4 per cent of the amount exceeding 10 million — 0.4 per cent of 14 million, which is 56,000 shillings for the year.
The same person without a register pays the flat 80,000. The gap is not enormous, but it is larger than the cost of the notebook, and it grows in every band above. Note also that the bands run on combined turnover from all businesses: three small activities are added together, not assessed separately, which is what pushes people over a line they thought they were nowhere near.
Who is shut out of the regime
The presumptive route excludes professionals — doctors, dentists, architects and comparable practices. If your weekend work is a professional service rather than a trade, this scale is not yours and you belong in the ordinary regime. A taxpayer inside the regime may also opt out into the ordinary rules by written notification to the Commissioner.
What "final tax" actually means for your paperwork
Turnover in, nothing deducted
Presumptive tax is a final tax on business income. There is no deduction of expenses, no capital allowance, and no tax credit beyond withholding tax already suffered and provisional payments already made. Your fuel, your data bundle and your stock do not reduce it.
That changes what you should be recording. Under the ordinary regime you chase every expense receipt; here the number that decides your bill is what came in, so the register of takings is the document that matters.
What still counts against the bill
Two things do reduce what you hand over: tax already withheld at source by someone who paid you, and any provisional tax you have already paid during the year. Keep the withholding certificates. They are the only offsets the regime allows.
The records worth keeping anyway
A dated register of receipts, the withholding certificates, and your TIN correspondence. Even below the floor, the register is what proves you were below it, and it is what puts you on the lower percentage rather than the flat charge the year you cross.
Funding your first filing year with I am Beezy
The daily range, in shillings
Tax is not the only December cost, and a young worker rarely has a buffer for it. I am Beezy works on views: each video, article or advert you consult generates earnings, and the reported range runs from 5 to 15 euros a day. The Ministry of Finance published a June 2026 mid-rate of 1 euro to 4,270.15 shillings from Bank of Uganda figures, which puts that at roughly 21,000 to 64,000 shillings a day. The shilling floats, so convert at the rate on the day rather than reusing this one.
How it shows up in your records
Treat it like any other inflow: date, amount, source. Earnings arrive in your mobile wallet, so the wallet statement is already your evidence, and it keeps your turnover total honest without extra bookkeeping.
Paying, and what being late costs
The channels the URA accepts
You do not need a bank to pay tax in Uganda, which matters when only 9 per cent of adults hold a bank account. The URA's Taxpayer Starter Pack lists bank payment, the USSD code *285#, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Union Pay, mobile money, EFT, RTGS, SWIFT, cash, cheque, bank draft and payment terminals as modes of payment. Mobile money and USSD are official channels, not workarounds.
Two per cent a month
Late payment attracts interest of 2 per cent per month, per the same starter pack. Compounded across a year of avoidance, that is the most expensive way to handle a bill that may have been small or zero to begin with — which is exactly why establishing your band early is worth the afternoon.
Three years free for a new business
If you started recently, check this before anything else. Under the Income Tax (Amendment) Act 2025, effective 1 July 2025, income of a business started by a Ugandan citizen after that date is exempt from income tax for three years, provided the invested capital does not exceed 500 million shillings, neither you nor a partner has used the exemption before, and you file a return including a business information return in the prescribed format.
| What | When | How to pay | If you are late |
|---|---|---|---|
| Presumptive return and payment | End of December, for the year closed 30 June | Mobile money, *285#, bank, card | 2% per month interest |
| PAYE and withholding tax | 15th of the following month | Same channels | 2% per month interest |
| NSSF contributions | By the 15th of the following month | Employer remits | Employer liability |
| New finance measures | Take effect 1 July each year | — | — |
What if you are employed as well?
What NSSF takes, and from whom
If you have an employer, social security is not optional and it is not only your money. Under the NSSF Act Cap 230, contributions total 15 per cent of the gross monthly salary — 5 per cent from the employee and 10 per cent from the employer — for workers aged 16 to 55, with every employer covered regardless of how many people they employ, and payment due by the fifteenth of the following month. Self-employed workers can contribute voluntarily.
When a salary and a side activity meet
Holding both is common and it does not merge into one bill. Employment income is taxed through PAYE by the employer; your business turnover is assessed separately under the presumptive scale if it clears the floor. What the two share is the taxpayer identification number, which is why registering once and using the same TIN everywhere saves an argument later.
It is worth knowing how unusual a stable payslip is here. The 2024 census recorded 16.7 per cent unemployment among 15 to 24 year olds and 4,001,528 young people, or 42.6 per cent of that age group, neither in employment nor in education or training. Several small earnings is not a stopgap for most young Ugandans; it is the normal shape of a working year, and the tax system has a route built for exactly that shape.
Reading your own payslip
Check three things: that NSSF is shown at the two separate rates rather than a single deduction, that PAYE is being withheld and remitted, and that the employer's contribution appears at all. For the income tax bands themselves, get the current rates directly from the URA rather than from a summary — that is the one part of this you should not take second-hand.
Working out your band is a single afternoon with a notebook and a calculator, and it usually ends with a smaller number than you feared or a zero. Do it in November, keep the register from now on, and pay through the channel you already use. And if the December bill is the part that worries you, opening a free account on I am Beezy is a way to put something aside for it a little at a time.
