Benin rental IRF and rent withholding working paper

General reference only. This skill is general tax/accounting reference material for AI-assisted workflows. It has not been reviewed for any specific person's facts, documents, elections, deadlines, residency, filing status, or local procedures. Do not rely on it to file, pay, amend, or take a tax position without review by a qualified professional in the relevant jurisdiction.

Who this applies to

Prepare a 2026 rental-income IRF and rent-withholding working paper, separately from annual TFU. IRF covers individuals and the article101(1) assimilated persons receiving property income: the State, communes, specified public establishments, associations and NGOs where they hold only property income. CGI art101(1)

Partners of a property-predominant company not subject to IS enter IRF. For this chapter, more than 50% of company turnover must be article102 property income. A company subject to IS is not brought into the individual IRF computation merely because it owns a building. CGI art101(2)

Article102 covers built and non-built property income, furnished letting, fixed industrial installations, building-lease rent and property-right ancillary income, only where the income is not included in business profits of an industrial/commercial enterprise, farm or noncommercial profession. Classify the business-income boundary first. CGI art102(1)

Rates, bands and thresholds

Item	Rule and conditions	Official source
IRF or withholding branch	The IRF rate is 12% of the article103 taxable rental base.	CGI art104(1)
IRF or withholding branch	The resulting IRF is increased by a separate FCFA4,000 ORTB levy. IRF and this levy appear distinctly on the same collection title as TFU; they are not a single combined percentage.	CGI art104(2)–(3)
IRF or withholding branch	Tenant withholding is 12% of gross rent, reduced to 10% where the landlord is subject to IBA or IS. The 10% is a withholding classification, not a replacement individual IRF rate for every landlord.	CGI art106(1)
IRF or withholding branch	Natural-person tenants are exempt from withholding, except those renting through an entity subject to tax on profits. Do not infer withholding exemption from a natural-person landlord.	CGI art106(2)

The base

Start with gross rent. Add owner expenses contractually borne by the tenant, and subtract tenant expenses the owner paid for the tenant. Keep supporting contracts and invoices; the statute does not give this job a general percentage expense allowance. CGI art103(1)

Owner-occupied housing has no imputed rental IRF under article102(2). By contrast, free provision to a third person without a legal obligation creates in-kind income valued under article157. The legal-obligation distinction must be evidenced before setting the imputed base to zero. CGI arts102(2),103(2),157

Prepare separate columns for gross rent paid, the adjusted article103 IRF base, the ORTB levy, withholding actually remitted and instalments. Article106(5) credits paid-and-remitted tenant withholding against tax due; article106(8) offsets withholding against instalments. A promise or unsupported deduction is not a paid-and-remitted receipt. CGI art106(5),(8)

Article106(3) calls withholding final but keeps the annual declaration. Do not infer a general refund or merge the ORTB charge into withholding. For a landlord within IBA/IS, stop at the correct 10% withholding schedule and send final business-tax treatment to that tax’s working paper; the final-liability interaction is not computed here. CGI art106(1),(3)–(5)

Deadlines and filing

By 10 February annually, give the competent tax service a statement naming tenants, prior-year rent received and withholding suffered. Pay tax on income that was not withheld with that statement. The administration can directly determine the base from leases or property-survey information, with disputes under articles583 onwards. CGI art105

Remit withholding spontaneously by the 10th for the preceding month’s rent. If rent was paid in advance, withhold and remit by the 10th of the month following the actual advance payment; do not spread the remittance over the accommodation months. CGI art106(4)

For State tenancies, Treasury deducts under article106(1) from rent-payment warrants and provides DGI a named prior-month withholding statement by the 10th. Owners remain jointly liable for remittance and can face the same recovery and sanctions. CGI art106(6)–(7)

IRF uses four instalments as for IBA, which article66 pays as IS: provisionally one quarter of preceding-year tax by 10 March, 10 June, 10 September and 10 December. If the prior return is not filed by the first instalment, article51 uses the penultimate year provisionally, regularised at the second instalment. Offset supported withholding without duplicating it. CGI arts106(8),66,51(1)–(2)

A non-IS property-predominant company files before 31 January: prior-year total receipts split between rent and other receipts, rent withholding, partners’ names/domiciles and their share counts. File at its registered-office tax service, or at the property-location service if the office is abroad. Pay unwithheld tax for partners with that statement. CGI art107(1)–(2)

Partners still file the article105 statement but do not owe IRF again on their profit share to the extent the company has already paid it. Article107(4)–(5) sends inaccurate company information to article485 and places late declaration/remittance sanctions on the company. CGI art107(3)–(5)

Article66 expressly pays IBA as IS; article51 provides quarterly provisional amounts and dates. This cross-reference supports the IRF instalment timetable, not an invented universal 30-April IRF annual deadline. CGI arts66,51

Build the annual tenant list and property-company partner schedule from leases, cash/bank receipts and remittance evidence. Prepare the ordinary/advance-rent deduction register showing landlord tax status, tenant status, gross payment, rate, month, amount remitted and receipt. Reconcile annual liability, ORTB, withholding and instalments separately. Deliver the statements and payment schedule to the authorised filer. No authenticated DGI form, box, submission, payment-reference or receipt screen was accessed; those steps remain unfinished.

Penalties and interest

The overview owns general filing/payment sanctions. Apply the article106 owner joint-liability and article107 company reporting conditions above. The TFU-specific relief in original finance-law article2 must not be assumed to waive rental IRF charges. LF2026 art2

Cross-border points

The June rectifying law adds CGI106(9): short/long accommodation bookings and rent collection for Benin buildings through Beninese or foreign electronic matching-platform operators enter article106(1) withholding, except operations for hotel establishments. The obligation belongs to the platform owner. Do not transfer it to every individual guest. LFR2026 art13 inserting CGI106(9)

A foreign office does not remove the article107 company-statement requirement: the Benin property-location tax service receives it when the company office is abroad. Treaty entitlement, foreign tax credit and a foreign owner’s complete territorial tax position require their own analysis. CGI art107(1)–(2)

Two worked examples that recompute

Adjusted annual IRF base, with separate paid withholding. An individual landlord outside IBA/IS receives FCFA2,400,000 rent. The tenant also pays 120,000 of the owner’s contractual costs; the owner pays 60,000 of tenant costs. Supported annual IRF base is 2,460,000, giving IRF 295,200. Add the separate ORTB 4,000. With valid paid-and-remitted withholding receipts totalling 288,000, the arithmetic reconciliation is 11,200 before any instalments. The example does not waive the annual statement or presume a refund. CGI arts103–106

name: Adjusted rental IRF and remitted credit
inputs:
  rent: 2400000
  owner_costs_paid_by_tenant: 120000
  tenant_costs_paid_by_owner: 60000
  remitted_withholding: 288000
  ortb: 4000
steps:
  irf_base: rent+owner_costs_paid_by_tenant-tenant_costs_paid_by_owner
  irf: irf_base*0.12
  assessment_with_ortb: irf+ortb
  cash_reconciliation_before_instalments: assessment_with_ortb-remitted_withholding
expected:
  irf_base: 2460000
  irf: 295200
  assessment_with_ortb: 299200
  cash_reconciliation_before_instalments: 11200

An advance changes payment timing; status changes withholding. On 5 May 2026 a non-exempt company tenant advances six months’ rent at FCFA150,000 monthly to an individual IRF landlord. Gross advance 900,000 creates 108,000 withholding, remitted by 10 June 2026, not monthly over six months. For an otherwise identical natural-person tenant renting directly without an intermediary profits-tax entity, article106(2) removes tenant withholding; it does not exempt the landlord’s IRF. If instead the landlord is demonstrably IS/IBA-subject, the same 900,000 payment produces 90,000 withholding at 10%, with final business tax outside this example. None of these cases involves a digital platform. CGI art106(1)–(4)

name: Advance rent and tenant or landlord status boundaries
inputs:
  monthly_rent: 150000
  months_advanced: 6
  company_tenant_withholding_gate: 1
  direct_individual_tenant_gate: 0
steps:
  gross_advance: monthly_rent*months_advanced
  individual_irf_landlord_withholding: gross_advance*0.12*company_tenant_withholding_gate
  exempt_direct_tenant_withholding: gross_advance*0.12*direct_individual_tenant_gate
  business_landlord_withholding_only: gross_advance*0.10
expected:
  gross_advance: 900000
  individual_irf_landlord_withholding: 108000
  exempt_direct_tenant_withholding: 0
  business_landlord_withholding_only: 90000

Ask the client first

• Who owns the property and is the landlord subject to IRF, IBA or IS?
• Is income already included in business profits, and does a non-IS company exceed the property-turnover test?
• What rent, advances, contractually shifted expenses and free/owner-occupation facts exist?
• Is the tenant an individual, an intermediary entity, the State or another entity?
• Which withholding was actually remitted and which instalments were already paid?
• Was a platform used, is a hotel establishment the beneficiary, and is the operative withholding period established?
• What foreign-office, partner, treaty or prior-year reporting facts change the filing route?

The original finance law commences on 1 January 2026. The signed June law’s article1 has a default prior-year rule for income-tax measures unless otherwise specified, while arts48–49 repeal contrary provisions and order execution without a calendar commencement date. Record the new platform text, but hold its first operational withholding period and any retrospective catch-up until commencement/administrative transition evidence is obtained. Do not call 24 June the proven payment cutover. LF2026 art48; LFR2026 arts1,13,48–49

Sources

Official source	What was actually read	Read on
CGI 2026	Text pages 32 (arts51–52), 54–56 (arts101–107), 74–78 (arts151–165), 216–217 (arts485–488 plus neighbouring sanctions), 279 (art645). Read all cited clauses and adjacent scope, exemptions and payment clauses; not the whole CGI.	2026-11-01
Law 2025-22 of 8 December 2025	OCR fiscal arts1–17 and final arts47–48; scans PDF2 (TFU relief),4 (CGI156 amendment),14 (commencement) visually read. No budget-table valuation reused.	2026-11-01
Law 2026-10 of 24 June 2026	OCR fiscal arts1–19 and final arts48–49; scans PDF4 (new CGI106(9)) and17 (final provisions) visually read. Article20 public-domain price schedule excluded from private-property values.	2026-11-01

Not yet confirmed: The first platform-withholding payment period and any retroactive transition; platform collection/remittance mechanics and special hotel classification; the actual article157 value for free third-party occupation; the interaction of article106 final withholding wording with IBA/IS final liability, overpayment/refund and ORTB settlement in a live assessment; registration duties, lease stamping, VAT on specific property services, property-sale gains and treaty/foreign-credit results; authenticated filing/payment screens and later instruments not identified in this bounded read. Independent AI source-fidelity review accepted the bounded preparation jobs on 1 November 2026; all stated holds remain and no accountant has attested to this version.