Govt to issue income tax on cocoa-coffee production

Government is planning to make cocoa and coffee producers pay income tax following a provision of the general tax code, which stipulates that all individuals with a known and traceable income must fulfil the income tax provision.

This was revealed March 12, 2015, in Yaoundé, on the occasion of the 23rd session of the General Assembly of the interprofessional Council of cocoa and coffee (ICCC).

The project, in gestation since 2013, relies on the strength of exporters of cocoa and coffee, who are covered by the tax authorities to collect this tax on behalf of the State, through sampling conducted during the operations of purchase of cocoa and coffee in the bundled markets organized by the producers.

"The taxmen want to use exporters to collect this tax. We tried to contain them until now. But the pressure is very strong. We do not know if we can resist any longer. You need to know that the producers will pay the income tax, and it is coming soon", warned Mr. Dikoumé, one of the leaders of the college of exporters within the ICCC.

It should be noted that, since the start of cocoa and coffee ongoing campaigns, Government had already made the recovery of levies on exports of these two products. Now, for each exported kilogram, a sum of 150 Cfa is removed from the economic operator for cocoa and 100 Cfa francs for coffee, against 54 Cfa francs in the past.

This increase of the export levies, will be used for the financing of the recovery program of cocoa-coffee channels, over the 2015-2020 period, for a total of 600 billion Cfa francs.

This plan aims to achieve by 2020 the production of 600,000 tonnes for cocoa, robusta coffee 150,000 tonnes and 35,000 tonnes for arabica coffee.