The Central African Republic taxes residents on worldwide income and non-residents on Central African Republic-source income only. The Central African Republic operates a self-assessment system for corporate tax, with the domestic tax authority conducting post-filing review.
The Central African Republic's tax year is the calendar year.
30% standard rate.
Impot sur le Revenu des Personnes Physiques (IRPP), progressive from 0% up to a 40% top marginal rate. Administered by the Direction Generale des Impots et des Domaines (DGID) under the Ministry of Finance and Budget. Residents are taxed on worldwide income; non-residents face a flat 15% withholding tax on CAR-sourced income (salaries or professional fees) with no deductions. Capital gains are generally taxed at 15% for residents and 20% for non-residents, subject to specific exemptions.
19% standard rate.
A company is resident if incorporated in the Central African Republic or centrally managed and controlled there; individual residency generally follows habitual abode. The Central African Republic is a member of CEMAC (Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa, alongside Cameroon, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon), OHADA (harmonized business law), and CEEAC.
A non-resident entity has a Central African Republic permanent establishment through a fixed place of business or a dependent agent habitually concluding contracts in the Central African Republic on the entity's behalf, following the OECD Model Treaty definition as applied under the Central African Republic's domestic law and any applicable tax treaty.
No CFC-style attribution provision was found in the Central African Republic's General Tax Code (Code General des Impots, officially consolidated 2017 with a 2023 update, published by the Ministry of Finance and Budget). The Code's structure closely mirrors the near-identical Code General des Impots framework used across the CEMAC zone (Cameroon, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon), all derived from a common French colonial-era codification template - and, consistent with that pattern in neighboring CEMAC states (confirmed directly for the Republic of Congo, whose CGI text is close to word-for-word identical in the relevant sections), the Central African Republic's own anti-abuse mechanism for cross-border related-party dealings is a transfer-pricing indirect-profit-transfer rule (reallocating mispriced profits back into the CAR tax base) rather than a CFC-style regime attributing a foreign subsidiary's own undistributed profits to a CAR parent.
No thin capitalization ratio or related-party interest-deduction cap was found in the Central African Republic's General Tax Code.
The Central African Republic 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. The Central African Republic 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.
The Central African Republic 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 the Central African Republic's foreign tax credit system where one exists.
The Central African Republic 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 the Central African Republic.
The Central African Republic participates in the CEMAC regional tax and customs harmonization framework alongside its five fellow member states. The Central African Republic has a confirmed bilateral tax treaty with France, per France's own official treaty partner list. The Central African Investment Charter (2001) separately provides tax and customs incentives for qualifying investments under CEMAC-compliant terms rather than functioning as a conventional double-tax treaty.