Local Tax System: Councils Stripped of Tax Collection Powers in Cameroon

By Synthia Lateu

The Government of Cameroon has stripped Councils of their authority to issue and collect local taxes and levies, transferring the responsibility from local councils to the central tax administration.
The reform follows a joint ministerial order signed by Finance Minister, Louis Paul Motaze and Minister of Decentralization and Local Development, Elanga Obam Géorges
The measure operationalizes the December 23, 2024 law on local taxation and places the collection of local taxes, duties, and municipal charges under the authority of the Directorate General of Taxes (DGT).
Under the new framework, municipal councils, subdivision councils, and city councils will no longer have the mandate to assess, issue, or recover local taxes and revenues.
Instead, local councils will now be limited to identifying taxpayers, informing the tax administration, and producing monitoring reports. The effective power to collect revenues has been re-centralized under the DGT, which now assumes full control of the local tax system.
For years, councils have relied heavily on internally generated revenues such as market fees, advertising taxes, permits, and other local levies to finance development projects and administrative operations.
The central government has justified the reform on the grounds of improving consistency and transparency. Authorities argue that municipal tax collection practices were often uneven, poorly monitored, and at times opaque. According to the government, centralizing the process under the tax administration could improve revenue tracking and redistribution.
The reform is expected to particularly affect the urban advertising sector, where several councils had outsourced the collection of advertising taxes to private operators through contracts that frequently drew criticism over transparency and legal compliance. With the State now assuming direct responsibility for revenue collection, uncertainty remains over the future of those agreements.
For years, Cameroon has pursued a decentralization process aimed at granting greater autonomy to local governments. The 2019 decentralization law, the gradual transfer of powers to councils, and the creation of regional administrations with independent budgets were all seen as steps in that direction.
However, this latest decree appears to move against that trend, raising concerns over the future of local financial autonomy in Cameroon