Egypt imposes 18% tax on social media ads

The Egyptian government has started collecting 18 percent on the value of advertising services on social media platforms when directing the campaigns outside of Egypt or managing them for foreign customers source told Amwal Al Ghad .

The source added that the social media platforms such as Facebook won’t  receive any share of this tax, referring that these platforms role  is limited to calculating the percentage and adding it to the final price of the online advertising campaign.

On the other hand, Facebook administration announced charging Egyptian-based advertisers on the platform 18 percent on the value of advertising services in case they do not provide valid Egyptian value-added tax (VAT) identification number.

Egypt introduced a Value Added Tax (VAT) regime in 2016, replacing a 10 percent Sales Tax.

How to calculate the newly imposed tax?

If you were recently charged 100 EGP because you reached your 100 EGP billing threshold, the subtotal for the charge will be 100 EGP in ad costs.

An 18% VAT will be added on top of that, so you’ll pay 118.00 EGP in total for that charge (100 EGP + 18 EGP = 118.00 EGP).

It also urged advertisers to check their account settings and make sure that they have provided the ID if they have it.

Key stats we need to know as we plan our Facebook Ads strategy for 2019:

1.52 billion use Facebook daily

2.32 billion use Facebook monthly

93% of the advertising revenue comes from mobile

2.7 billion people use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger each month (Facebook’s “Family” of services)

500 million people use Instagram Stories daily

2 million advertisers are now focusing on Stories