The Somaliland Home Minister, Mohamed Kahin Ahmed has declared that Somalilandโs big companies and wealthiest individuals do not pay any income, corporation or goods taxes, at all.
Speaking before the standing committee of the Somaliland House of Representatives, Minister Kahin stated โ every low income worker in Somaliland, from the soldier, to the midwife to the elderly woman with the small tea shop on the street pay taxes to the government, but not a single large enterprise, from the remittance, telecommunications, power, export and import, or production companies pay taxes. And when we in the Home ministry and the Finance ministry try to enforce the laws, we receive a delegation from these organizations led by other ministers and parliamentarians, this is unacceptable and untenableโ
The minister stated that in Somaliland, โevery single day hundreds of millions of dollars are taken out of the country and out of the economy, and the government purse doesnโt receive a single dollar in taxesโ.
The issue of taxation and the avoidance of any payments by the big businesses and wealthy merchants in Somaliland has been an open sore since the late Egal administration. The weakness of the central government, and itโs institutions like the Central Bank and the Finance ministry, the Auditorโs office, along with the decrepit and corrupted parliament has led to this situation.
Without stringent laws, scrupulously applied to every one, nothing will change. What the wealthy companies and individuals fail to comprehend is that unless taxes are paid to the government to provide services such as security, no business can be conducted and no property will be safe.
