Published on 26.05.2023 at 4:15 p.m. by Journal du Gabon. Com with new Gabon
Business leaders during an ordinary general meeting of the Federation of Gabonese Companies (FEG), on May 23, with the President of the FEG Henri Claude Oyima, proposed a dialogue to review the single land contribution tax .
Entry into force in Gabon on 1is January 2023, the Single Land Contribution (CFU) is an annual tax which is payable by any natural or legal person holding built or unbuilt land. Indeed, this tax is not accepted by business leaders because they think it is “an additional tax to pay”. For business leaders, the sum of property taxes or taxes to be paid, whether it be the CFU, the IS, the ISL (synthetic tax in discharge, editor’s note), amounts to around 65% or even 70% of income. What is “quite heavy” for companies. We learn on the Gabon Nouveau site.
Present at this general meeting of the main employers’ organization in Gabon, the Prime Minister, Alain-Claude Bilie-By-Nze, said he was open to dialogue. Because, “the State sets up a tax system with a certain number of objectives, either effectively to increase public resources or invest, or to better regulate a sector. From the moment we arrive at the phase of applying a tax and we encounter some difficulties, perception, understanding, or application, it is useful for the government and the professionals to sit down and to look at how all this can be better articulated, reformulated and together redefine a certain number of elements and parameters”, he said before continuing. “I believe everyone wins. We have no interest in maintaining a tax that would be a foil. No interest. We would not achieve the desired objective. And I don’t think that companies would have any interest on their side in necessarily seeking to escape a certain number of contributions”.
The Prime Minister’s proposal was well received by the FEG. “We are going to get closer to the Minister of the Economy, so that we can meet to understand each other better”, concluded the President of the FEG. According to the Directorate General of Taxes, the’interest in paying the CFU is to provide resources to local authorities for the development of local public services. Gabon hopes, thanks to this tax, to double its land revenue in 5 years. Remember that this tax corresponds to 2.5% of the net taxable value of the land or building, for natural persons, and 16% for legal persons, according to the Directorate General of Taxes.
Source: Gabon New
