“(Ecofin Agency) - The exchange of information as an effective means to fight against fraud and international tax evasion: the role of inspectors-auditors”. Cameroonian tax inspectors gathered for a seminar on this theme on 22 July in Yaoundé, the capital-city, under the aegis of the ministry of Finance, technically assisted by the OECD.

The meeting’s first aim is to reveal to the tax inspectors-auditors the techniques commonly used by multinationals to evade the tax authorities. Secondly, it is about giving senior staff of the Cameroonian tax administration the tools to enable them to get the necessary information from the appropriate partners, in order to have a better knowledge of the activities of these malicious taxpayers.

This training course takes place after the adoption by the Cameroonian parliament and the promulgation, between March and April 2015, of a bill authorising the Head of State to have Cameroon adhere to the convention of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), on the mutual administrative assistance in tax matters.

Defending this bill before the Financial Commission of Parliament, the Minister of Finance, Alamine Ousmane Mey (photo), explained that “the requested ratification will enable the enactment of this convention which offers our tax administration the opportunity to improve its skills in collecting tax information, especially when it concerns the Cameroonian subsidiaries of multinationals whose parent company are, for the most part, located in tax jurisdictions already signatories to this convention. This should allow for better tax returns and therefore, significantly more resources for our country”.