Between non-existent tax centers and missing funds, the local tax reform reveals a deep governance crisis that directly threatens the functioning of local authorities.
The illusion of a modernized local taxation is cracking as the texts are confronted with the reality of Decentralized Territorial Collectivities, analyzes Peggy Kuate Todom, PhD in political science at the University of Dschang in the African Review of Legal, Administrative and Political Sciences.
Presented as the cornerstone of the 2024 reform, the Local and Individual Tax Centers (CFLP) were supposed to embody efficiency and proximity. One year later, they mainly symbolize an empty, almost cynical promise.
Created by ministerial decree in March 2025, these centers were supposed to structure tax collection at the local level. On the ground, the observation is damning: non-existent structures, empty offices, absent staff, missing equipment. The reform, sold as a historic turning point, clashes with a chronic administrative inertia. “How can we talk about financial autonomy when the structures supposed to guarantee it do not function?” asks the author, pointing out a glaring contradiction between stated ambition and observable reality.
Taxpayers, meanwhile, pay the price of this disorganization. Left to poorly explained and rarely accessible digital platforms, they navigate blindly. The promised awareness campaigns never materialized, widening a worrying gap between administration and citizens. Tax becomes not a shared duty, but an opaque, sometimes arbitrary ordeal.
But the heart of the scandal lies elsewhere: in the opacity of financial circuits. The reform provided for the opening of dedicated accounts at CAMPOST to secure local revenues. After a symbolic initial deposit, nothing more. The expected transfers did not follow. The collected funds seem to vanish in the labyrinth of the Treasury, depriving municipalities of vital resources.
Immediate consequence: suffocated local authorities, unable to meet their most basic obligations. Salaries, maintenance, basic services all falter. “The ineffectiveness of the law results in a sharp drop in local revenues,” notes Peggy KUATE TODOM. A drop that is not abstract: it translates into degraded public services and abandoned projects.
Behind this fiasco, one question arises: who benefits from this confusion? Because far from simplifying, the reform seems to have thickened the administrative fog. An additional layer of complexity, conducive to all abuses, and especially to irresponsibility.
At this rate, Cameroon’s local taxation will not be a model of successful decentralization, but rather “a textbook case of institutional failure.” And in this failure, it is the citizens who, once again, pay the price.
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