Taxes in the French Protectorate of Cambodia

Abstract

In recent years, tax in Cambodia has been subject to significant reforms and has been rapidly evolving. In 2023, a new comprehensive Law on Taxation was promulgated. Tax collections were only 10% of GDP in 2009, rising to 18% of GDP by 2020. These recent developments in tax and tax administration have drawn attention to the role of tax in the economic development of Cambodia.

A historical perspective can be helpful in the study of economic development. However, there are no dispassionate studies of tax in the French Protectorate of Cambodia. Most studies focus either on French Indochina as a whole or overseas French colonies as a whole. Therefore, this study has the modest aim of identifying and describing taxes collected by the Cambodian government during the period of the French Protectorate of Cambodia. For this study, the years 1913-1945 were chosen due to the availability of budget data in the Annuaire Statistique de l’Indochine produced by the Indochina government. Documents available in the National Archives of Cambodia supported an understanding of and interpretation of the budget data.

This study identifies six main sources of income for the French Protectorate of Cambodia: personal tax, prestation tax, property tax, licensing taxes, direct income, and grants from the central Indochina government budget. The main source of government income were direct taxes in the form of personal tax, prestation tax and property tax. Over the period of 1913-1945 we see the foundations of modern taxes put in place. Towards the latter years of the French Protectorate of Cambodia, prestation tax was eliminated and salary tax and income tax were introduced.

Researchers and interested parties are invited to make use of the Cambodian budget income for the years 1913-1945 which have been compiled by the author from the Annuaire Statistique de l’Indochine series. The file of this budget data in Excel/Google Sheet format may be downloaded by scanning the QR code below.