Taxes

written Monday, 7 January 2008

 

While I was in Missira I also stopped by the Rural Community (basically the county government) office, and they explained to me how taxes work here, which I had been wondering about for a long time.

 

In the rural villages, it is very simple.  Taxes are collected (by government officials with the help of the village chief, simply by going door to door) once a year.  Each family is supposed to pay 1000 CFA (about $2) for every person between the ages of 14 and 65 (or maybe it was 75 - I can't remember now).

 

There is no penalty for those who can't pay.  After all, what could the government do - foreclose on their hut?  So the government tries to motivate people to pay their taxes by awareness raising - teaching people that the taxes go to projects that benefit the community, like new wells, schools, and roads.

 

The rural community tax money is supplemented by money from the central government in Dakar (but where does that money come from?  Taxes on the richer Dakarois? foreign aid?  I'm not sure).  Most projects are funded through a sort of match grant system, where Dakar will pay, say, 90% of the costs and the rural community has to come up with 10%.  If the rural community can't pay their share, then the project doesn't happen.

 

So how effective is this essentially voluntary tax system?  It varies from year to year.  The official I was talking to said that in 2005 and 2006 about 95% of people paid their tax, but for 2007 hardly anyone paid.  Was that due to a bad harvest?  Were people just poorer?  No, he said, the harvest was fine.  It was due to a "variety of factors".  And that was all he would say about it.

 

Which made me think that maybe people had decided the rural community officials were corrupt and were "eating the money" (i.e. embezzling it), which is a common complaint among villagers, but I have no idea how widespread a problem it actually is.

 

There is another tax for people who live in "batiments" - concrete houses instead of huts - and I'm sure for people in towns the tax structure is different and probably less voluntary.  But that was all of my lesson for the day.