The Algerian government announced, on 10 August, the start of a tax amnesty aimed at integrating funds circulating in the informal sector into the banking system. “The voluntary compliance program as specified by the Complementary Finance (Law LFC 2015) is effective as of 2 August 2015”, announced the Direction générale des impôts (DGI – Bureau of Internal Revenue) in a communiqué published on its website.

The DGI invited all interested persons in the same communiqué to get in touch with bank branches to get information on the practical implementation modalities of this program.

LFC 2015 specifies that “the amounts deposited in the banks within the framework of this operation by any person, regardless of their situation, will be subject to a lump-sum flat taxation at the rate of 7%”, indicating however that “the sources of these funds or the transactions which generated them must be lawful and not correspond to any criminal act as defined by the Penal Code and the legislation governing the fight against money laundering and financing of terrorism”.

The deadline for this program has been set by LFC 2015 as 31 December 2016.

Analysts estimate that losses linked to tax evasion by Algerians is about USD 4 billion per year.

Algerian oil and gas revenues should drop to USD 34 billion this year against USD 68 billion in 2014, due to the fall in crude oil prices on the international market.