Cameroon and the OECD taxes to form a technical team

Cameroon tax inspectors had seminar under the aegis of the Ministry of Finance to form a technical team against fraudsters and were supported by the Convention of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

The seminar, which begun on July 22, 2015 in Yaounde, was themed; "The exchange of information as an effective means to fight against fraud and international tax avoidance: the role of auditors-inspectors".

The meeting was firstly aimed at revealing, to tax auditors and inspectors, some unscrupulous technical activities used by multinationals to slip through the tax authorities.

After, the Cameroonian tax administrators and executives were trained on the key things that will enable them obtain necessary information from appropriate partners to have a better knowledge on the activities of these corrupt taxpayers.

This training session came after the adoption by the Cameroonian parliament and promulgation who drafted a law to be authorized by the head of state, to make Cameroon's accession to the Convention of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, between March and April 2015.

In defending the bill before the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, the Minister of Finance, Alamine Ousmane Mey, explained that "the requested ratification would allow the access of this agreement which gives our tax administration the opportunity to improve its tax information collection capabilities. This is especially with regard to the Cameroonian multinational subsidiaries whose parent companies are mostly located in tax jurisdictions, already parties to the Convention. This should induce a better tax yield and therefore more resources for our country."

Developed in 1988 and amended in 2010, this convention, according to the OECD, is "the most comprehensive multilateral instrument and demands (countries acceding to) all possible forms of cooperation to combat tax evasion and fraud tax".

Formerly used by some selected countries, this convention was made opened to all countries since June 1, 2011.