Cameroon may impose income tax on coffee producers

According to Cameroon's tax law, everyone's known and traceable income is subject to income tax. The 23rd session of the National Council of Cocoa and Coffee (National Cocoa and Coffee Board, referred to as CICC) held in Yaound é on March 12 revealed that the government intends to impose income tax on cocoa and coffee producers.

It is reported that the tax plan has been in the pipeline since 2013, but so far it has been boycotted by cocoa and coffee exporters. The tax authorities had intended to impose income tax on the purchase of cocoa and coffee beans by the above-mentioned exporters, as procurement transactions are usually done in classified markets organized by producers of cocoa and coffee beans.

Dikoum é, one of the heads of the exporters' branch of CICC, said that the tax authorities wanted to use exporters to collect the income tax. Exporters have been trying to resist it until now. But there is a lot of pressure. I don't know how much longer I can hold out. It should be known that producers of cocoa and coffee beans pay income tax and specific policies will be introduced soon.

Not long ago, at the beginning of the new cocoa and coffee growing season, the Government of Cameroon raised the tax on cocoa and coffee bean exports from 54 CFA francs per kilogram of cocoa or coffee beans to 150 CFA francs and 100 CFA francs respectively. Together with the above-mentioned proposed producer income tax, the increased income will be used to finance the revitalization plan of Cameroon's cocoa coffee industry for 2015-2020. The revitalization plan, which requires about 600 billion CFA francs, aims to produce 600000 tons of cocoa beans annually by 2020, 125000 tons of Robusta coffee beans and 35000 tons of Arabica coffee beans, respectively.

It is not easy to achieve the above goals. It is reported that the output of coffee beans was 32807 tons last year, while the target for 2015 is to reach 40, 000 tons.

Whether the government has raised export taxes on cocoa and coffee beans and intends to levy income tax on producers of these agricultural products (14.71,-0.21, 1.41%) is conducive to the revitalization of the cocoa coffee industry, or whether it will make the cocoa coffee industry even more difficult, we can only wait and see. (Wang Bo and Yu Xiongfei)