How to apply for taxation of costs in Uganda

1. At a glance

It is written for the advocate drawing or defending a bill of costs, and for anyone advising a client on whether — and how — to challenge a taxing officer's assessment. It does not reproduce the Sixth Schedule fee scale itself (the specific figures are covered separately, in the dedicated bill-of-costs tooling), and it does not cover criminal costs or costs in tribunals with their own separate costs regimes.

2. What taxation is, and the two kinds of bill

Taxation is the process by which a court officer — the taxing officer, ordinarily the registrar or a deputy registrar exercising that function — examines a bill of costs item by item and fixes the amount properly payable. Two quite different bills can be taxed, and keeping them apart matters throughout this note.

Party-and-party costs

Where a court order provides that costs follow the event (the ordinary rule, subject to the court's discretion to order otherwise), the losing party pays the winning party's costs, as assessed on taxation. This is what most litigants mean by 'costs' in casual conversation.

Advocate-and-client costs

Separately, and independently of any order between opposing parties, an advocate's own bill to their own client can be taxed. This is what regulation 10 of S.I. 123 of 1982 specifically addresses, and it protects the client against an advocate who renders a bill in vague, summarised or block form rather than itemising the work actually done.

3. The statutory architecture: Regulations and parent Act together

The taxation regime rests on two distinct instruments that must be read together, and confusing which provision lives where is the single most common error in this area of practice. The Advocates (Remuneration and Taxation of Costs) Regulations, S.I. 123 of 1982, made under s.77(1)(e) of the Advocates Act, Cap. 267, govern the mechanics of taxation itself: how a bill is lodged, the notice given, the scale applied, and the process at the taxation hearing. The Advocates Act, Cap. 267 itself — the parent Act, not the Regulations made under it — is where the appeal mechanism against a taxing officer's decision actually sits, in s.62.

4. Regulation 9: notice of taxation

Once a bill of costs is lodged and the prescribed fee paid, regulation 9 requires the taxing officer to issue a notice stating the date and time fixed for the taxation. The notice must ordinarily issue not less than five days before the taxation date, unless the registrar specially allows a shorter period. A copy of the notice, together with a copy of the bill itself, goes to each advocate or other person entitled to notice — meaning every side with a genuine interest in what is taxed gets both warning of the hearing and sight of exactly what is being claimed.

For the advocate drawing the bill, regulation 9 is the procedural clock: lodging the bill starts the process, and the taxing officer's notice fixes the date everyone must be ready for. For the advocate on the other side, the notice and the accompanying bill are the trigger to prepare objections to specific items before the hearing, not to raise them for the first time on the day.

5. Regulation 10: advocate-client taxation and the block-form protection

Regulation 10 gives either the advocate or the client — not just the client — the right to have an advocate-client bill taxed, without needing a prior court order for that purpose. This cuts both ways: an advocate uncertain whether a bill will be challenged later can proactively seek taxation, and a client who feels overcharged can apply for taxation directly.

The regulation's real protective force is in what happens when a client applies to tax a bill the advocate rendered in summarised or block form — a lump sum for 'professional fees' rather than a line-by-line account of the work done. In that situation the taxing officer must give the advocate an opportunity to submit a properly itemised bill before proceeding, and — this is the operative safeguard for the client — the advocate is not bound by, or limited to, the amount shown in the original block-form bill. Both the advocate and the client receive due notice of the taxation and are entitled to attend and be heard.

6. The Sixth Schedule fee scale

The taxing officer applies the scale of remuneration set out in the Sixth Schedule to S.I. 123 of 1982 when assessing what an advocate may properly charge. That Schedule was substituted by the Advocates (Remuneration and Taxation of Costs) (Amendment) Regulations, 2018 (S.I. 7 of 2018) — the current scale is therefore the 2018 version, not the original 1982 figures.

This note does not reproduce the scale's actual figures or bands: fee schedules of this kind are revised from time to time, are owned and maintained elsewhere in Wakilii's tooling for exactly that reason, and quoting a specific figure here risks it going stale. The point to take from this section is simpler and more durable: always confirm you are working from the post-2018 consolidated Schedule, not an older, pre-amendment version, when drawing or checking a bill.

7. The real appeal mechanism: s.62 of the Advocates Act

This is the section of the note that corrects the most consequential error in how this topic has previously been described. A party aggrieved by a taxing officer's order or decision does have a remedy — but it is not found anywhere inside S.I. 123 of 1982. It is s.62 of the Advocates Act, Cap. 267, the Act under which the Regulations themselves were made.

s.62(1) — the appeal itself, 30 days

Any person affected by an order or decision of a taxing officer made under Part of the Advocates Act dealing with remuneration and costs, or under any regulations made under that Part (which includes S.I. 123 of 1982), may appeal within thirty days to a judge of the High Court. On that appeal the judge may make any order the taxing officer might have made — meaning the appeal is not confined to sending the matter back, but can directly substitute the judge's own assessment.

s.62(2)-(3) — referral by the taxing officer

The taxing officer is not limited to waiting for an aggrieved party to appeal. Under s.62(2) the taxing officer may, of their own motion, refer any matter arising in a taxation to a judge. Under s.62(3), the taxing officer may also refer a matter for a judge's opinion where both parties consent — a cooperative route that can resolve a genuinely difficult point without an adversarial appeal.

s.62(4) — Law Council rules

The Law Council is empowered to make rules governing the manner in which appeals and references under s.62 are brought, and the fees payable on them — so the precise procedural mechanics of lodging a s.62(1) appeal should be checked against the current Law Council rules in force, not assumed from the bare text of s.62 alone.

s.62(5) — no automatic stay

Bringing an appeal or a reference under s.62 does not, by itself, stay execution of the decree or order to which the taxed costs relate. A party who wants execution held off while the appeal is pending must apply for a stay expressly — it is never automatic.

8. How the courts approach a s.62 reference: the erroneous-in-principle standard

When a taxation is actually brought before a judge — whether by an aggrieved party's appeal under s.62(1) or a referral under s.62(2)/(3) — the standard the judge applies is deliberately narrow, and the leading Ugandan authority on it is Bank of Uganda v Banco Arabe Espanol.

The practical significance of this standard is that a s.62 appeal is not a fresh, open assessment of what costs should have been allowed. It is a review confined to demonstrated error of principle, and the appellant must show both that such an error occurred and that it made a material difference to the amount awarded. A party who simply disagrees with the quantum, without identifying the specific wrong principle the taxing officer applied, will not succeed on appeal.

9. Consequences of getting taxation procedure wrong

An advocate who cites the 1982 Regulations as the source of a reference-to-a-judge time limit, or who applies a non-existent 14-day objection window, risks missing the real 30-day deadline under s.62(1) of the Advocates Act entirely — and once that window closes, the taxing officer's decision stands, however strong the substantive objection might have been.

On the merits, an advocate who brings a s.62 appeal without identifying a specific error of principle — arguing only that the amount 'feels too high or too low' — will lose on the Banco Arabe Espanol standard, however genuinely aggrieved the client is.

There is also a client-facing risk on the advocate-client side: rendering bills only in block or summarised form invites exactly the scrutiny regulation 10 is designed to produce, and can leave an advocate having to justify, item by item and after the fact, work that was never properly recorded as it was done.

10. Practical guidance and drafting tips

11. Common pitfalls

• Looking inside S.I. 123 of 1982 for the reference-to-a-judge mechanism — it is not there; the correct provision is s.62 of the Advocates Act, Cap. 267.
• Applying a 14-day objection or chamber-summons mechanism to a Ugandan taxation — that is a Kenyan-law artifact with no counterpart in Uganda.
• Rendering an advocate-client bill in block or summarised form and expecting it to be taken as final if the client challenges it under regulation 10.
• Treating party-and-party costs and advocate-client costs as the same thing — they are assessed differently and regulation 10's block-form protection is specific to the advocate-client relationship.
• Arguing a s.62 appeal as a general re-assessment of quantum rather than identifying a specific error of principle, as Banco Arabe Espanol requires.
• Attributing the erroneous-in-principle standard to 'Bhatt v Habib Versi Ratansi' instead of Bank of Uganda v Banco Arabe Espanol.
• Assuming a s.62 appeal or reference automatically stays execution — it does not, absent a specific order under s.62(5).
• Quoting a specific current Sixth Schedule figure from memory instead of checking the post-2018 consolidated text.

12. Grey areas and points to confirm

A small number of points recur in taxation practice and should be confirmed rather than assumed. The exact procedural mechanics of lodging a s.62(1) appeal or a s.62(2)/(3) referral — forms, filing fees, whether a formal certificate of taxation must first issue — are governed by Law Council rules made under s.62(4), which should be checked in their current form before an appeal is filed, rather than inferred from the bare text of s.62 alone. The precise current figures and bands in the Sixth Schedule (as substituted by S.I. 7 of 2018) are deliberately not reproduced in this note and should always be pulled from the current consolidated Regulations, or from the dedicated bill-of-costs tooling that maintains them, immediately before drawing a bill — not from memory or an earlier bill. Finally, the genealogy of authorities Banco Arabe Espanol itself cites — Premchand and Raichand v Quarry Services, Attorney-General v Uganda Blanket Manufacturers, and others — are noted here only as context for the development of the standard; none of them was independently verified in this research, and any of them should be checked directly before being cited as freestanding authority in a live matter.

13. Practitioner checklist

1. Confirm the order for costs (or the retainer, for an advocate-client bill) before drawing anything.
2. Draw an itemised bill against the current, post-2018 Sixth Schedule scale — never a remembered figure.
3. Lodge the bill and pay the prescribed fee; watch for the regulation 9 notice fixing the taxation date.
4. For an advocate-client bill previously rendered in block form, be ready to itemise it fully if challenged under regulation 10.
5. Attend the taxation prepared to justify each item against the scale.
6. If aggrieved by the decision, file the appeal to a judge under s.62(1) of the Advocates Act within thirty days — not under any provision of S.I. 123 of 1982.
7. Frame that appeal around a specific error of principle, per Bank of Uganda v Banco Arabe Espanol — not a general disagreement with the amount.
8. Apply expressly for a stay of execution if one is needed — it is never automatic under s.62(5).

14. Sources and further verification

• Advocates (Remuneration and Taxation of Costs) Regulations, S.I. 123 of 1982 — regs. 9, 10; Sixth Schedule (as substituted by S.I. 7 of 2018).
• Advocates Act, Cap. 267 — s.77(1)(e), s.62(1)-(5).
• Bank of Uganda v Banco Arabe Espanol, Civil Application No. 23 of 1999, [2000] UGSC 3.
• The current Law Council rules on the manner and fees of s.62 appeals and references, and the precise current Sixth Schedule figures, should be confirmed against primary sources — or the dedicated bill-of-costs tooling — immediately before filing or relying on them.