Minfi, Eneo to boost collection of property taxes

The Tax Office (DGI - Direction Générale des Impôts) of the Ministry of Finance and Eneo, electricity distribution company in Cameroon, have partnered to boost the collection of property taxes in the country.

In other words, the electricity company will make available to the tax office a database containing a little over one million names of customers owning real estate properties.

In this way, Eneo will help the DGI to increase the number of taxpayers in its database subject to the payment of property taxes from 138,510 in 2015 to 1.1 million individuals and companies in 2016. In addition to broadening the property tax base, DGI also announces an amnesty for the previous tax years, for all taxpayers paying this tax this year.

Since 2014, the Cameroonian Inland Revenue has been paying a particularly attention to this tax, whose payment has not yet become the custom for Cameroonians. Therefore, the government has been taking numerous initiatives to simplify the payment of this tax by taxpayers.

This was the purpose of the agreement signed in October 2014 with two mobile network operators, to establish the payment of property taxes through mobile money. In 2015, DGI experimented with the door-to-door method, which resulted in the home distribution of property tax declaration forms. Objective: Increase the total amount of this tax to at least FCfa 3.5 billion per year, against FCfa 2 billion currently.