2019 Finance Law: E-transmission of the Statistical and Tax Returns in Cameroon

The 2019 finance law of Cameroon has brought in a new disposition whereby taxpayers are obliged to submit their statistical and tax returns form electronically. This concerns taxpayers under the specialized management units.

Before, taxpayers of the specialized management unit were bound to file in their statistics and tax returns in both hard and soft copies. Section M.2 (3) of the GTC was therefore modified in the 2019 Finance Law to state that:

“(3) However, enterprises falling under a specialized management unit shall be required to transmit their statistical and tax returns only electronically using the computer system established by the tax authorities.”

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The specialized management units include the Large Tax Department and Taxation Centers for Medium-Sized Enterprises. In effect, they are now obliged to file in their tax returns through the computerized system put in place by the tax administration. This is the new trend to transform the tax procedures to become paperless. This will help ease the exchange of information for tax purposes within the tax administration as well as foreign or national tax authorities. The electronic filing therefore is necessary in other to facilitate the exploitation of these information with ease.

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It should be noted that taxpayers in this unit are supposed to file in their Statistical and Tax Returns (STR) before March 15^th each year. According to a press release by the Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motaze, the deadline for the electronic transmission for 2019 was pushed forward to June 30, 2019. This was due to the fact that taxpayers or tax advisors were not aware of how the system works.

However, the Minister also reminded taxpayers that 2018 tax balances were supposed to be paid before March 15^th 2019 through the online platform for declaration. Taxpayers who didn’t respect the deadline will receive sanctions as put in place by the tax administration.

It should be noted that Section M 99 of the general tax code on penalties for not filing or failure to forward the statistical and tax return within the deadlines provided was also modified. In effect, any taxpayer who shall not respect the deadline or fails to file in the STR shall be given a non-discountable fixed fine.

Fines for failure or delay in filing the statistical and tax returns

• Companies under the Large Tax Unit: 5000,000FCFA (five million francs cfa)
• Companies under the Medium-sized Enterprise Taxation Centres and Specialized Taxation Centres: 1,000,000FCFA (one million francs cfa)
• Companies under the Divisional Taxation Centres: 250,000FCFA (two hundred and fifty thousand francs cfa)

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