(Business in Cameroon) - Over the last five fiscal years (2015 to 2019), Cameroon's tax population has grown by more than 20%, from 89,741 to more than 121,566 taxpayers, according to data provided by the tax administration.
The tax authority explains that this increase is remarkable in the medium business segment where the number of taxpayers rose from 1,500 to nearly 15,000 during the period under review. As a result, in 2018, new tax centres for medium-sized enterprises were established in all ten regions of the country, and in 2020 new regional tax centres were created in the Central and the Littoral regions.
Despite these achievements, the informal sector is still under-taxed, looking at its weight in GDP. The use of cash is still very prevalent in commercial transactions, making it difficult to control tax information. Because of this issue, authorities plan to strengthen the tax identification system to further broaden the tax base.
Emphasis has already been placed on the withholding tax mechanism, thanks to which taxes are levied on transactions that enterprises in the informal sector carry out with large companies. With this mechanism, CFAF50 billion is raised every year, as prepayments and advance payments, from taxpayers in the informal sector.
Sylvain Andzongo