Starting on 1 January 2022, all associations and tontines will be forced to pay new taxes: VAT, IT (Income Tax), IRCM (Tax on Income from Transferable Capital) as well as the additional communal centimes. A real scandal. This new taxation is neither regulated by OHADA nor by any financial regime.

The tontine is a saving and not a value-added transaction.

It is unacceptable, criminal and outrageous to require associations and tontines to have a taxpayer's card in order for the tax authorities to deduct taxes on their members' tontines and movable capital. The state must not impose double taxation on the same item. The money that ends up in the tontines has already been taxed somewhere.

Mr. Biya's regime has decided to bury Cameroonians for good.

A responsible state is judged by its capacity to support the population, to accompany them in their daily development efforts and to provide for those who survive, as do the vast majority of compatriots.

Compared with those who have chosen to tax the tontines rather than reduce the cost of living of the State (useless and unproductive operational expenses) which is on the rise for 2022, even Lucifer is like an innocent. Cameroonians will no longer accept the astonishing and revolting paradox between the tax pressure, the scandalous expansion of the tax base on the one hand and the waste, the embezzlement of public funds in organized gangs on the other hand.

The taxing of associations and tontines is proof that we are inexorably moving towards the final financial asphyxiation of Mr. Biya's regime.

At the level of the National Assembly, the most astonishing aspect of all this is that in addition to the late delivery of documents to members of parliament - in defiance of the internal rules of the National Assembly which prescribe a deadline of 15 days at the latest before the opening of the session - the President of the National Assembly refused any parliamentary debate on the content of the finance bill. I was the victim of this ostracism during the plenary of the parliamentary session that has just ended. As in several plenary sessions since I have been in the National Assembly with regard to oral or written questions.

The fact remains that the members of the Finance Committee have seen the ministers who have 'defended' their budgetary envelopes parade before them. They had time to question them. How could they validate the financial monstrosities contained in Article 93 of the General Tax Code for the year 2022? How could they abandon millions of Cameroonians who live thanks to associations and tontines? The Finance and Budget Committee of the National Assembly has become a mere post office box.

The national sovereignty belongs to the people who exercise it through the President of the Republic and the Parliament or by referendum. On the one hand, we have a Parliament abusively controlled by the obese and ill-gotten majority of the RDPC, which does not accept any serious debate in plenary. On the other hand, we have a President of the Republic who, rather than putting himself above political apparatuses on sensitive issues that impact the daily lives of Cameroonians, behaves more like a party activist and even goes against the interests and aspirations of his own activists as is the case with the provisions of Article 93 of the General Tax Code for the 2012 fiscal year. This leaves only the option of a referendum which Mr. BIYA will never organise.

Unless this tax on associations and tontines is simply withdrawn, Cameroonians must say NO to this new tax provision. Taking from the poor to enrich the rich is morally indecent. Mr Biya must stop being the Robin Hood in reverse.

Hon. Jean Michel NINTCHEU
Deputy

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