The establishment of a tax culture must go through the awareness of taxpayers in order to achieve an integration of tax citizenship in the behavior of the citizen, said Tuesday in Dakar, an official of the Observatory of the quality of financial services (OQSF).

"Good tax culture can only be achieved with awareness, communication with taxpayers but also, integrate civics into the behavior of the citizen," said Momar Diop, president of the OQSF's Orientation Council.

"Tax is like a contribution for the actions of the community," he argued during a training session on "financial education, tax citizenship and entrepreneurship" dedicated to the collective of journalists specializing in economics.

In this context, Momar Diop called for the integration of fiscal citizenship into the behaviour of the citizen, who must be considered as a customer and not a taxpayer, so that the tax is perceived as "a national solidarity".

He believed that the main challenge must be to formalize the informal sector in order to broaden the tax base.

"Formalization is a weakness compared to our economy. A contract of trust must be established between the administration and the taxpayer. It must be established to be able to inculcate this civic-mindedness," Diop noted, assuring in passing that it was up to decision-makers to promote this trust.

He recalled that the Office of Strategy and Monitoring of the Directorate General of Taxes and Domains (DGID) had set up a typology of the tax standard consisting in grouping all these tax contributions in tax baskets.

"It is a synthetic tax that consists of the fixed global contribution," explained the president of the orientation council," commented Momar Diop.

The President of the Steering Committee added: "The State, through the DGID, has made considerable efforts in terms of restructuring, openness, simplification of procedures, visibility".

According to him, it is a question of gaining the confidence of the citizen in the integrity of the tax administration.

The President of the Steering Committee of the OQSF also raised the issue of the tax burden corresponding to the total amount of revenue collected, expressed as a percentage, the rate represented by the tax in the gross domestic product (GDP).

"We can consolidate the tax by playing on the broadening of the tax base towards other taxpayers but, this requires an effort to raise awareness in relation to the tax administrations," he explained.