BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

There are a vast variety of taxes and levies in both established and developing nations that have an impact on people and businesses, locals and foreigners, producers and distributors, employees and retirees. Value added tax, individual income tax, corporate tax, mining tax, forestry tax, petroleum tax, toll gate charge, weight station fee, and other tax collecting methods are all used in Cameroon. These include the national employment tax, communal tax, council tax, CRTV TAX, and FEICOM, which are levied at various levels to enable the government to provide the populace with a number of basic services and facilities.

Government sets the pace and controls the music. According to Ogundele (1999:8), government involvement in the economy can take many different forms. Depending on the type of political model used in the country’s governance, the level of interference varies from one country to the next. The intervention in question is taxation, which has an impact on all facets of human endeavor in a well-planned economy.

According to Anyanwu (1997:18), tax administration includes budgeting for expenditures at all levels of government as well as creating tax policies and collecting taxes. It entails managing government revenues and expenses through controlling, organizing, directing, monitoring, planning, and management. The long-term goal of tax administration is to implement government programs as effectively as possible by cutting down on waste, as well as to collect all registered taxes at the lowest possible cost. Therefore, the government must sufficiently increase its revenue. Taxation is one of the ways the government can raise money to support its plans and objectives for economic development. A tax is a mandatory charge that the government imposes on its citizens or their property through its agents in order to accomplish certain aims. Usually, these objectives aim to raise the nation’s overall standard of living. In a similar spirit, tax is defined by Arnold and McIntyre (2002) as a mandatory levy on income, consumption, and the production of goods and services as specified by the applicable legislation. Government charges various taxes on its inhabitants, homes, and businesses that fit under the tax bracket in order to raise money for development projects and social services.