Withholding tax on customer invoices

By the end of this guide, you will know how to apply withholding tax — the part of your invoice that the customer (often a large account or the State) remits directly to the tax administration. SynkriaOps computes it, records it and shows it on your documents.

Understand the principle

Withholding tax reduces the amount collected today, but constitutes a receivable from the tax authority: this advance will be deducted from your income tax. It is therefore neither an expense nor a loss — it is a cash-flow timing shift.

An example

A 1,000,000 XAF incl. VAT invoice with a 5.5% withholding. The customer pays you 945,000 XAF and remits 55,000 XAF to the tax authority on your behalf. These 55,000 XAF are recorded as a tax advance on your assets.

Configure the 4492 account

The tax advance is recorded on a dedicated account (4492 by default, configurable). You adjust this account in Settings → Accounting settings if your chart requires it.

Enable withholding on an invoice

1. When creating a customer invoice, enable withholding tax and enter the applicable rate.

2. SynkriaOps computes the withheld amount and the net payable by the customer.

3. Validate: the generated entry includes a paired, contact-side line that records the tax advance on account 4492, while keeping the debit = credit balance.

Auto-reversal on a credit note

If you issue a credit note on an invoice with withholding, the withholding line is automatically reversed: the tax advance is neutralised consistently with the credit granted.

Check the rendering on the PDF and dot-matrix print

Withholding tax appears explicitly on your documents: both the A4 PDF and the ESC/P dot-matrix print show the withholding line and the net payable, so the customer knows exactly how much to pay and how much to remit to the tax authority.

See also

• Create a customer invoice — enable withholding at issuance
• Create a credit note — the automatic reversal of withholding
• Dot-matrix printing — the rendering on an impact printer