Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Eating Crow

Rats! I’m going to have to eat some crow on my last post. I just discovered that Burkina Faso actually has a law requiring foreigners to pay a tax on their rent payments! Looks like our landlord was right on that count after all. It’s payable in advance when you fill out a rental contract, so it’s certainly not in our best interest to try and fix a 3-year contract. If we have to move for any reason before the 3 years are up, we won’t get our money back from the government.

If we don’t have an official rental contract, we’ll get charged for back payments plus a penalty if the government ever comes around to inspect, so we want to get one filled out asap. Looks like that’s essentially what happened to our landlord. He got caught by the government, renting out premises without a contract. Since he also has to pay a tax on rental income, it sounds like they pinched him pretty good for this infraction.

Live and learn, I guess :/

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