Tax Revenue: Remarkable strides in the first 9 months of 2015

The October 16, 2015 monthly coordination meeting of the Directorate General of Taxation that held in Ebolowa, South Region, was full of revelations. It emerged from the get-together that reforms put in place in the sector by the Director General of Taxation, Modeste Mopa Fatoing are paying off.

The Ebolowa meeting revealed that the taxation department fetched FCFA 1,300 billion to the State coffers between January and September 2015. September alone fetched FCFA 110 billion as against the FCFA 100 billion projected. The South Region, seat of the last coordination meeting, contributed by FCFA 3.3 billion far above the earmarked amount. The Directorate was tasked to mobilise FCFA 1,604 billion in 2015.

Fourth Quarter Objectives

The 2015 Finance Law sets FCFA 415 billion as revenue to be mobilised by the General Directorate of Taxation in the fourth quarter of the year.

Management of the department of the Ministry of Finance seeks to consolidate reforms while enlarging the tax base to remedy taxpayers’ files. The strengthening and monitoring of new measures enshrined in the 2015 Finance Law such as the minimum discharge tax and raising the monthly income deposit tax rate as well as clearance of tax arrears have been identified as areas of focus.

Teams have since the beginning of this month been charged to collect tax arrears through a compulsory recovery operation that is expected to fetch some FCFA 50 billion from some companies.

Impressive Reforms

At the origin of the impressive performance of the Directorate General of Taxation is the strict implementation of reforms put in place in the sector. Such are the streamlining of the tax file, securing revenue and the creation of medium-sized enterprises centres (CIME).

Small and Medium-size Entreprises constitute 80 per cent of the companies in Cameroon and the Directorate General of Taxation seems to have understood the secret of its contribution to GDP.

This partially explains why taxpayers have increased from 2,500 in the last census bythe National Institute of Statistics to 96,791 as at September this year as reported by Modeste Mopa Fatoing during the October 16, 2015 coordination meeting. The broadening of the tax base has improved revenue collection.