laitimes

A brief discussion on the processing of tax exemption certificates in Cameroon

author:Transportation technology

Chen Changhu, Li Xinna, Zheng Haichen

Overseas Business Department of CCCC First Public Bureau Group Co., Ltd

Abstract: As a translator working in Cameroon, his work involves a wide range of fields, among which the processing of tax exemption certificates is particularly important in large-scale tax exemption projects because of the large amount of money involved, affecting the company's capital status and project progress; In Cameroon, the tax exemption certificate is divided into local material purchase tax exemption certificate processing and import goods tax exemption certificate processing, among which the import materials due to various reasons, the procedure is particularly complicated, resulting in a tax exemption certificate for imported goods to be processed for at least one month or more. This article only takes the Yadu project tax exemption certificate application as an example, and briefly introduces the specific procedures, difficult factors and countermeasures for tax exemption certificate application.

Keywords: tax exemption certificate; Ministry of Economic Planning; Owner; List of duty-free imports; Customs;

A brief discussion on the processing of tax exemption certificates in Cameroon

1 Introduction

As the first highway project in Kaza, the Yadu Expressway project has a total investment of US$568 million, of which the Export-Import Bank of China contributes 85% and the local government accounts for 15%, and gives contractors many preferential measures, including exemption from customs duties and other taxes such as value-added tax. According to Cameroonian law, raw materials and industrial equipment (chemical products, industrial machinery, motor vehicles over 20 tons, etc.) are taxed at 10%. Therefore, the reduction of customs duties and value-added tax can greatly relieve the financial pressure of an enterprise, increase construction efficiency and speed up the construction period. For Cameroon, imported goods arrive at the port of Douala (economic center) in Cameroon, but because the political center of Cameroon is located in Yaoundé, and the ministries required for tax exemption certificate processing are located in Yaoundé, for the Yadu project, an office responsible for customs clearance of imported goods is established in Douala, and all tax exemption certificates are handled by the project department in Yaoundé.

2 Body

2.1 Specific Process

For the Yadu project, the tax exemption certificate is mainly divided into two parts: the tax exemption certificate for the purchase of local materials and the tax exemption certificate for imported materials. In contrast, the tax exemption certificate for the purchase of local materials is less difficult and only involves the State Administration of Taxation under the Ministry of Finance. The main process is as follows: (taking diesel as an example) first the project requests a proforma invoice from the local diesel supplier, and then the project sends a letter to the State Administration of Taxation under the Ministry of Finance requesting a tax exemption certificate, which must be accompanied by the above-mentioned proforma invoice, the signature page of the project contract and the exemption clause page. After the letter is submitted, there is a long waiting process, and what needs to be done to facilitate the progression of tax-free documents will be mentioned in the following countermeasures. When it comes to tax exemption certificates for imported goods, this procedure is relatively complicated. After determining that the project is a duty-free project, the contractor needs to negotiate with the supervisor and determine the list of imported materials (clarify the name, unit price, total amount of imported materials, etc., and the information associated with the import list is best not too specific, so as to avoid future customs use this as a reason to find trouble when importing), this list needs to be submitted to the owner (Ministry of Public Works), then to the Ministry of Economic Planning, and finally to the General Administration of Customs, after the signature and seal of the four parties, this material import list will take effect. (It should be reminded that an import list will change as the project progresses, and Customs will also require contractors to update the import list regularly) For different imported materials, as long as the materials in the import list are importable, to determine that the imported materials are within the scope of the import list, it is necessary to prepare the bill of lading (provided by the domestic supplier), the provisional customs declaration (provided by Cameroon Customs), and then the contractor sends a letter to the supervision, (attached is the bill of lading for this single of goods, Provisional customs declaration and list of approved imported materials), after reviewing the content of the letter, the supervision board will give the contractor a formal approval letter. The contractor then sends a letter to the owner (attached is the supervision's letter of approval, the bill of lading for this goods, and the list of imported materials that have been approved in the provisional customs declaration), and after the owner's approval, the owner writes to the Ministry of Economic Planning and finally the Ministry of Economic Planning issues a tax exemption certificate. Once the contractor has obtained the tax exemption certificate, it needs to be submitted to the Customs Department for subsequent customs procedures. Obviously, compared with the processing of local material tax exemption certificates, the processing of import tax exemption certificates requires more ministries and takes more time.

2.2 Hardship factors

The tax exemption certificate procedure for local purchased materials is relatively simple, and the difficult factors will intersect with the tax exemption certificate application procedure for imported materials, so I will not repeat it here. The difficult factors referred to here mainly refer to the difficulties in obtaining tax exemption certificates for imported materials.

(1) The relevant documents (provisional customs declaration, bill of lading) arrive late in the project

After a batch of goods leaves the port, domestic suppliers need to send the relevant maritime information (bill of lading, invoice, packing list, certificate of origin, insurance policy and electronic tracking form after inquiry) to the customs clearance office as soon as possible, so that the customs clearance office can carry out subsequent customs clearance. However, usually domestic suppliers will have the following problems: a: they do not send relevant shipping documents to the customs clearance office at the first time. b: There are errors in the sent files that need to be changed and corrected. If such a situation occurs, the time for processing the tax exemption certificate will be greatly shortened, resulting in the situation that the tax exemption certificate has not been issued before the goods arrive at the port.

(2) There are many departments involved and it takes a long time

From the beginning to the end, a tax exemption certificate probably needs to go through the following departments: supervision, engineering department, economic planning department. In addition to the supervision office, which does not spend a lot of time, other ministries such as the Ministry of Engineering, after the document is submitted, the Minister of Engineering first approves and designates the document to be handled by the subordinate department, and after the document arrives at the department designated by the Minister (Road Investment Bureau), the Director of the Road Investment Bureau decides, this document is responsible for the specific person under this department, and after the document is drafted, it is reported layer by layer until the minister signs, the procedures of the Ministry of Engineering are completed, and the procedures within the Ministry of Economic Planning are the same. Such a procedure would take a lot of time.

(3) Ministers, department heads who travel for a long time and have no replacement personnel during this period

There is an unwritten rule within Cameroonian ministries that ministers or heads of departments generally do not appoint special agents to manage their day-to-day work (especially to sign documents) during business trips, so that we can only wait for the minister's return from a business trip, which is an undoubtedly a great waste of time for such an important document as a tax exemption certificate that needs to be processed as soon as possible. Imagine that if a tax exemption certificate happens to be on a business trip between the minister and the head of the department during the processing period, it will take at least one month more than the original basis.

(4) Ministries and commissions do not trust each other and do not take responsibility

In the early stage, in order to simplify the procedures for applying for tax exemption certificates, the project had sent letters to the Ministry of Economic Planning and the Ministry of Engineering, because the approval process of the tax exemption certificate was mainly in the Ministry of Economic Planning, and the Ministry of Economic Planning and the Ministry of Engineering were begged for the consent of the Ministry of Economic Planning and the Ministry of Engineering, eliminating the approval link of the Ministry of Engineering, and the project directly sent to the Ministry of Economic Planning, which would greatly reduce the time spent on applying for the tax exemption certificate. However, the Ministry of Economic Planning refused, arguing that the owner of the project was the Ministry of Engineering, and all procedures needed to be approved by the owner, otherwise the Ministry of Economic Planning would not handle it. In fact, in the final analysis, because the tax exemption certificate involves capital problems, after obtaining the consent of the owner, the capital budget relative to this part is borne together with the Ministry of Engineering, and in the event of a problem, the Ministry of Economic Planning does not need to bear the responsibility itself.

(5) The frequency of government personnel turnover is high and the work efficiency is low

In the internal government of Cameroon, there is an unwritten rule, every once in a while, the personnel of each position will be replaced, for the replacement of personnel, on the one hand, it takes a period of time to adapt to the new job, on the other hand, everyone has their own working habits and requirements, which on the other hand, and greatly increases the difficulty of tax exemption certificate processing, usually after being familiar with a person's rules, after a period of time to adapt to other rules. Moreover, the inaction of government personnel has greatly increased the difficulty, and after the documents arrive in his office, they are usually put on hold for a few days, and if they are not urged, they will not process the documents at all, which also greatly wastes valuable time.

2.3 Response Measures

In view of the above difficult factors, it can be concluded that it is not particularly easy to obtain a tax exemption certificate in Cameroon, and it involves government departments, especially when the documents reach a height that we cannot reach (such as ministers), and all we can do at this time is to wait. Of course, after that, we still have many measures to urge government departments to process documents as soon as possible. The following are just a few specific examples.

(1) Specific documents are specific to the individual, and constantly urge.

For the fact that the duty-free documents arrive at the project late, the Chinese personnel involved, which requires the customs clearance office and the project to urge the relevant domestic personnel to strive to send the relevant documents to the project before the goods are shipped, so that the project can handle the tax exemption certificate this morning. During the project tax exemption certificate, it is also necessary to be specific to the specific clerks within the government to find the personnel of the ministries and commissions who handle this document, although it takes a long time to finally reach the clerk who processes the document after the document is submitted, but as long as the relevant person is found, you can give him a copie avancée (the advance document is a copy of the official letter to the owner) in advance, so that the clerk will process the document in advance, which is relatively time-saving.

(2) It is necessary to establish a good cooperative relationship with government personnel.

Due to the long processing period of the tax exemption certificate and the large number of local government departments involved, we need to keep a good grasp of each step and the clerks to go through. Be able to know which department the documents arrived in the first place. When the letter is drafted for the project, the department through which the letter passes needs to have a familiar contact, and it is best to ensure that the document arrives somewhere in the office who can immediately notify you and be sure that he will process the document immediately and get the document to the next stage. One way, and another way, to find an agent between each ministry who is responsible for tracking all the documents. These two methods have their own disadvantages and can be selected according to the specific actual situation. In addition, there is another point to remind, because the documents arrive at the minister, at this time we seem powerless, and once the minister travels or vacations, there are a lot of documents piled up in the office, and the minister's working hours are certain in a day, so at this time the documents are very urgent, it is particularly powerless, in fact, at this time we can also curve the country, through the minister's special secretary or ceremonial officer, let him put the documents related to us in the minister's immediate processing of the documents, In this way, it can also save a lot of time.

(3) Regularly reflect the difficulty of applying for tax exemption certificates for projects.

The efficiency of the Cameroonian government makes all Chinese-funded enterprises in Kazakhstan feel overwhelmed, and if a matter is not reminded 3 or 4 times or more, the government department will not deal with it at all. In view of the difficulty of applying for tax exemption certificates on the project, the project often needs to report the difficulties of the project to the relevant ministries in the form of formal letters and ask them to solve this problem as soon as possible. But first of all, it needs to be clear that this effect is not very obvious, but sometimes it can still play a positive role, you need to persist. This was the case with the Yadu project, but because the processing time was too long, the contractor suggested canceling the approval of the Ministry of Works and writing directly to the Ministry of Economic Planning, although it was also implemented for a while, but it was eventually banned. But during that time, the efficiency was still good.

The above analyzes the main measures from 3 aspects, and I personally feel that in the process of applying for a tax exemption certificate, the most important thing is to keep track at all times, know the location of the document, and then think of a way. Then the initial investment is also indispensable, we must always pay attention to the changes in government personnel, and grasp the information of relevant personnel changes in the first time, so that we can achieve twice the effect with half the effort.

3 Conclusion

This article mainly analyzes some relevant knowledge of Cameroon tax exemption certificate processing from three aspects, which is only a very shallow level to discuss this topic, if you want to really sort out the key points, you also need Cameroon local legal knowledge as a basis. But for the small point of tax exemption certificate, mainly grasp the above points, there will still be no big problems. Of course, there will be other problems in the process of processing, such as the wrong bill of lading, the inconsistency between the bill of lading and the bill of lading number on the provisional customs declaration, and so on. Therefore, in the process of processing, we should pay great attention to not delay the application of the tax exemption certificate due to some small mistakes.

A brief discussion on the processing of tax exemption certificates in Cameroon

Disclaimer: We respect originality and focus on sharing. Some of the content comes from the Internet, the copyright belongs to the original author, only for learning reference, prohibited for commercial use, such as inadvertently infringing the intellectual property rights of which media, company, enterprise or individual, etc., please contact to delete, and this headline push content only represents the author's views, and the headline operator has nothing to do with it, the authenticity of the content please readers identify by themselves, this headline number does not assume any responsibility.

Read on