Business Visibility and Taxation in Northern Cameroon

Abstract

Abstract:Through an analysis of the taxation of business activities in Adamaoua Province, Cameroon, this article aims to provide ethnographic substance to current debates about the “tax effort” in sub-Saharan Africa. Although the current mission of the tax authorities to identify all potential taxpayers and track their locations, movements, and activities is often presented in the context of nationwide reform and a commitment to making all taxable enterprises visible, a close examination of the government's practices reveals other factors at work. The case of cattle traders in particular shows that taxation policies in Adamaoua today are based on an interplay between, on the one hand, modes of state control and levels of administrative ef-ficiency, and on the other, longstanding repertoires of business practice and idioms of documentation.

Talking Law in Times of Reform: Paradoxes of Legal Entitlement in Cameroon

“…In this last section, I explore the ways in which la concertation elucidates the contours of particular social fields. Here I take heed of Erik Larson's (: 470) argument that “by constructing social environments in which particular legal orientations are valorized or ignored, the regimes created to implement substantive rules impact the behavior of … participants [in any given organizational field].” As I have shown elsewhere (Muñoz ), established norms and practices that govern cattle trading in Adamaoua Province enable and constrain regulatory action, including taxation. Out of the form that regulatory action takes, in turn, emerges a certain legal consciousness that shapes norms and practices.…”

“…participants [in any given organizational field]." As I have shown elsewhere (Muñoz 2010), established norms and practices that govern cattle trading in Adamaoua Province enable and constrain regulatory action, including taxation. Out of the form that regulatory action takes, in turn, emerges a certain legal consciousness that shapes norms and practices.…”

Introduction

“…Through fiscal disobedience, she argues, citizenship is (re)defined by the economic relationship of taxation. For many scholars, examining instances of such disobedience has proved a useful way to elucidate how competing ideas of citizenship, the state, and property rights play out during conflicts over regulation and redistribution (Goodfellow and Owen 2018;Muñoz 2010;Owen 2018). They have demonstrated how citizens politicize taxation in complex ways, parsing out the taxes they feel are legitimate and those they feel the state does not deserve.…”

The Fiscal Commons

“…Tax has proven to be a productive lens through which the relation between the state and civil society can be explored (Campbell 1993;Martin and Prasad 2014;Timmons 2005). Anthropological contributions to the study of tax, while scarce and disjointed in comparison to other fields, follow this line of thinking and have seen tax policies, various taxation practices, and the avoidance of tax payments in relation to the different historically and culturally contingent configurations of the state-citizenship nexus (Björklund Larsen 2017Guyer 1992;Maurer 2008;Muñoz 2010). As the anthropologist Lotta Björklund Larsen (2017: 14) notes in her study of the Swedish tax agency: "Taxes can be viewed as where the state has greatest impact on the private lives of its citizens" and can be seen as "the most pervasive of relationships existing between citizens and state."…”