Burkina Faso taxes residents on worldwide income and non-residents on Burkina Faso-source income only. Burkina Faso operates a self-assessment system for corporate tax, with the domestic tax authority conducting post-filing review.
The Burkinabe tax year is the calendar year.
27.5% standard rate; minimum tax of 0.5% of turnover applies; mining companies subject to separate Mining Code rates.
Progressive, 0% to 27.5% (Impot Unique sur les Traitements et Salaires for employment income).
18% standard VAT.
A company is resident in Burkina Faso if incorporated there or centrally managed and controlled there. Resident companies are taxed on Burkina Faso-source income (Burkina Faso, like most WAEMU members, generally applies a territorial approach to corporate taxation). Individuals are residents if they maintain a primary home in Burkina Faso, spend more than 183 days there in a 12-month period, or have their center of economic interest there.
A non-Burkina Faso-resident entity has a Burkina Faso permanent establishment through a fixed place of business or a dependent agent habitually concluding contracts in Burkina Faso on the entity's behalf, following the OECD Model Treaty definition as applied under Burkina Faso's domestic law and any applicable tax treaty.
No CFC-style attribution provision was found in Burkina Faso's General Tax Code (Code General des Impots). Burkina Faso instead has a real, current transfer-pricing anti-abuse rule - indirect profits transferred to a related enterprise (whether Burkina Faso-based or foreign) under common dependence or control are reincorporated into the resident entity's taxable results, whether the transfer occurs through inflated/deflated purchase or sale prices, excessive royalties, interest-free or off-market loans, debt forgiveness, or payments disproportionate to services rendered. This is a transfer-pricing reallocation mechanism, not a CFC regime - it pulls mispriced profits back into the Burkina Faso tax base, rather than attributing a foreign subsidiary's own undistributed low-taxed profits to a Burkina Faso parent regardless of pricing. Burkina Faso's tax authority (DGI) has also issued implementing rules (Arrete No. 2022-101/MEFP) specifying the content and format of the annual transfer pricing declaration, and the dependence/control requirement for Article 66 to apply is waived entirely where the counterparty is resident in a non-cooperative state or territory with a privileged tax regime.
No thin capitalization ratio or related-party interest-deduction cap was found in Burkina Faso's General Tax Code.
Burkina Faso does not use an elective check-the-box classification system; entity classification generally follows the entity's actual legal characteristics under the French-derived legal tradition shared across the region. Burkina Faso does not have a comprehensive ATAD2-style anti-hybrid regime.
No foreign bank account or foreign financial asset reporting regime exists requiring residents to separately disclose foreign accounts; foreign income is reported through the standard annual tax return.
Burkina Faso does not provide a broad participation exemption for foreign dividends in the European sense, consistent with the transfer-pricing-focused (rather than exemption-focused) anti-avoidance framework already confirmed elsewhere on this page; relief from double taxation is available primarily through Burkina Faso's foreign tax credit system where one exists.
Burkina Faso has a foreign tax credit mechanism for foreign tax paid on foreign-source income also taxed domestically, capped at the domestic tax otherwise due on that income - confirm current specific provisions directly given limited public documentation of this area for Burkina Faso.
Burkina Faso participates in the UEMOA (WAEMU) multilateral tax treaty covering fellow West African Economic and Monetary Union members, with a maximum 15% withholding rate on interest to non-residents and 10% on dividends under that treaty. CORRECTION: Burkina Faso terminated its bilateral tax treaty with France around 2024, per a dated KPMG Flash Alert - the treaty is no longer in force despite appearing on some outdated treaty lists; Mali and Niger followed with their own French-treaty terminations shortly after. Burkina Faso has a bilateral tax treaty with Tunisia (8% on dividends) and has no bilateral tax treaty with the United States.