Indirect tax reforms and revenue mobilization in Cameroon

As most developing countries strive to achieve Economic growth and development, it has been quite a challenging issue to attain a balance in their fiscal policy management. Most of these countries have faced a prolonged (persistence) budgetary deficit caused by the increasing growth in their public expenditures more than in their incomes. The most important puzzling question has been why is there a slow revenue mobilization in developing countries? It was realized in the mid 1980s by the World Bank studies that this slow revenue growth has been due to their poor fiscal design policies. Hence according to the Ahwad and Stern (1991), SAP design for developing country’s tax reforms was accorded a top priority. Meanwhile Sohota (1961) earlier pointed out the role of tax reforms as one of the important and a major ingredient to economic development of a nation. Cameroon in Sub Saharan Africa faced this problem in mid of 1980s. The country was not only heated by a recession but faced a prolong budget deficit problem from 1986-1994. Since 1990 two major tax reforms were implemented in 1994 and 1999 to restructured the country‘s tax policies for revenue mobilization in order to overshadow the deficit scenario. It is rather unfortunate that since the reform package were implemented; there has been little or no work done so far to assess the success or influence of the reforms on indirect tax revenue raising capability. It is this challenge or knowledge gap that I was motivated to cover in this piece of work. Due to the large scope of taxation, this issue of tax revenue mobilization is restricted only to the indirect tax reform in Cameroon. The major pre-rogatives of this work involve; -An exposition of the indirect tax structure of Cameroon and the trends of tax revenue growth. -To investigate if the tax reforms did improve the initial tax revenue situation or rather helped to engineer the response of the tax system to changes in the tax bases for the purpose of raising sufficient revenue requirement for the economy. -To identify which indirect tax hurdles become more responsive (flexible) or remain rigid after the tax reform, as well as which of the indirect taxes responded to revenue increases depend on discretionary power influence than by natural response (elasticity). -Finally, what are the conceivable implications of the indirect tax outcomes to the tax policy makers of the country? Methodology: I used the model of tax elasticity and buoyancy , estimated from a tax function, an approach used by similar works in other developing countries by Prest 1962; Sohota 1961; Lavin 1968; Mansfield 1972; Chellah 1971. The tax elasticity is the responsiveness of the tax revenue growth relative to the change in the tax bases excluding any external influence on the revenue growth such as the use of discretion, changes in tax rates and so on while Buoyancy is similar but involves measurement of total tax revenue that encompasses all other external influences. Within the indirect taxes, the sales/VAT taxes (STV) as the main consumption tax and Custom duty/imports (CTM) from international strand were utilized as samples for the analysis. The GDP used as the main tax base, with one proxy base (actual base) for each tax sample. The total imports of goods and services (TMGS) as the proxy base for custom duty tax and private final consumption expenditure (PFCE) for the expenditure taxes. Time series data on tax revenue from 1980 -2003 were used basically due to difficulties of getting tax revenue data in an extended period for Cameroon. Data on sales/VAT taxes and custom duty tax were obtained from Cameroon tax department of the ministry of finance and Central Bureau of National statistics while that on GDP, PFCE and TMGS, were obtained from World Bank Development Indicator. The data on discretionary tax revenue were not available at all in Cameroon. Thus, I finally adopted the Dummy variable techniques used by Singer (1968) to capture the effect of tax reforms and in estimating the tax elasticity of the indirect taxes in Cameroon. Hence from a given tax function, a series of regressions were ran using the Eview and stata as the main statistical software package . RESULT: The overall results of the tax reforms on revenue mobilisation in Cameroon showed a progressive trend. The impact of the 1994 and 1999 tax reforms in regards to revenue raising tended to vary depending on the specific tax and the respective tax basis. The empirical finding of the impact of the 1994 tax reforms on STV showed a decline in the intercepts of 22% and 24.5% for GDP and PFCE respectively. The long run effects of the elasticity response (slopes shifts) resulted to a positive increase in STV revenue of 0.039 and 0.311 from GDP and PFCE. Similarly the CTM experienced a decline in the intercepts that resulted to a decrease in it tax revenue from the pre- reform level by 19% and 43% out of GDP and TMGS. The elasticity response shows an elastic increase in slope by 0.056, an indicated rise in CTM revenue by 5.6%. On the contrary, there was inelastic decline in slope of 0.54 for TMGS. This implies decrease in CTM revenue by 54%, which was only in the short run due to the reduction in tax rate intended to counter the effects of rising prices cause by devaluation of the country currency in1994. In respect to the 1999 tax reform impact, the VAT showed a positive shift in the intercept of 10.35% and 3.43% in respect to GDP and PFCE as tax bases, with an insensitive response of slope (elasticity) alteration. The interpretation of the stated empirical findings of this work are that a decline in intercepts signifies an autonomous lost (leakage) of tax revenues. On the other hand elasticity response due to changes in slope in a positive direction indicates an increase in revenue due to increase tax rate by reform and an inelastic response of a decline in the slope indicates falling tax revenue due to a cut in tax rate. One very interesting realisation of this slope interpretation is the opposite effects on the tax base, where the underline tax bases decline in the post 1994 tax reform except for TMGS due to a cut in CTM rate. A comparative analysis of the stated result of the difference indirect tax hurdles showed that CTM become more responsive to revenue yield than STV in the post 1994 reform period. VAT remains rigid to revenue mobilisation after the 1999 tax reform. Other findings of the research from the analysis of elasticity and buoyancy with regards to the third objective indicated that before tax reforms in Cameroon; both indirect tax samples had an inelastic response to changes in their bases, while the post reforms, result of the STV became more responsive (elastic) and the customs duty remained inelastic. Again there were indications of dominant use of discretion in mobilising revenue than through in-built response of the elasticity. The final outcome of these results and it implications that warrant some policy intervention are the realised lost in revenue, inelastic response of the tax bases which threaten sustainability future tax revenue flow and the ultimate effects of unpredictable use of discretion in the country tax system. Few recommendations have been suggested in the light of improving the situation