How To Register Your Business In Tanzania

If you’re keen on doing legitimate business in Tanzania, then you should register your business with Business Registration and Licensing Agency (BRELA) an agency empowered by the government under act No 30 of 1997 for business registration in Tanzania.
Registering your business is easy and fast. But it can be a little bit frustrating if you don’t know where to steps even the cost of registration.
In today’s article, I will show you how you can easily register your business in Tanzania and help you do it all by yourself anytime you ready.

Available business registration options in Tanzania are

Business name
Private company
Public company
Foreign company

In this article, I want to cover a subtopic of registering a business name and private company because is what many business owners do in Tanzania.

Why You should register your business
Before moving any further, let’s see why is important to register your business in Tanzania.
There are several good reasons why it makes sense to register your company in Tanzania

1.You can attract funding
Your bank can easily get you money. For example, if you registered your company and you get an order to supply products worth 8,000,000. You can show them and domicile your account with them. This gives bank confidence that the money they are given you will be recovered. And the bank is assured of protection if the company is registered.
2.Gives your business professional feel
Once your register your business will open operate account and you’re going to give your bank details to all your customers. This will let them know that their money is safe with you and they will surely receive what they ordered
3.Secure your brand.
Registering your business name gives you the safety of exclusively because nobody will be allowed to use such business name. For example, I set up my this website 2 years ago. And I intended to use the name of my website as a business name. So once I went BRELA for registering www.tanzaniapetroleum.com as a business name I found the name was already taken by another business person in Tanzania. To stand out I picked up an alternative name. Never allow this happens to you

5 StepsTo register your business in Tanzania
Now, let see how you can register your business in Tanzania
In Tanzania, all business registration begin at BRELA (An agency responsible for business registration and license
Step 1.Select name for your business name
Once you select the name, Go online into   BRELA website and search availability of your name.
submit your business name for name search. If the name you search is unavailable, it might already take by someone else, or it shares close similarities with the existing business name.So you should repeat the process with different names and you will finally find one.

The good new is you don’t need to physically visit BRELA office for business registration. BRELA has an online registration system that makes business registration much easier and fun.

To perform your business search and register your business name, create an account in the online Business Name Registration System (OBRS). In this online registration process, enter your email address, and phone number.

For business name registration, you will be required to provide a phone number, email, and box.

And then you will receive an email notification to confirm your registration and you will be able to search or even register your business name.
Then after. BRELA will approve your registration and you will make payment through CRDB or NMB Bank
BRELA will send you an original certificate via your postal address. This process is quite simple and doesn’t require to be a computer expert. But if you feel this is stressful work ask for help from someone else.

Step 2.
You should prepare two important documents that are memorandums of the company and article of association. And you will be required to fill a form No. 14A that gives detailed information about office location directors and company secretary.
Fill the form correctly with CAPITAL letter, submit an original filled form to BRELA and pay an applicable fee based on the magnitude and share capital of your business. and get back with a photocopy of filled form as a reference- This process it takes two days
As I said earlier, business registration fee in Tanzania is categories based on company share capital. But the cost for business registration in Tanzania is cheap that any serious entrepreneur who takes his business seriously can afford.
Now let see the structure of business registration fee
For company whose share capital is The 20000 to 1 million
Registration fee Tshs 95,000/=
Filling Fee Tsh 22,000 for each document, because you’re supposed to have 3 documents =22,000 ×3=66,000
Stamp duty fee for each copy of memorandum and article of association is TSH 5OOO because you nee 3 copies   5000 ×3= Tshs 15000
Stamp duty fee for form No 14b   Tshs 1200
So Total cost for a company with share capital from 20,000 million to 1 million
Is 95,000 + 66,000+ 15000+ 1200=Tsh = 177,200
For a company with share capital 1 million to 5 million
Registration fee= Tshs 175000
Filling fee 3 ×22,000=66,000
Stamp duty fee 3 copy of memorandum and article of association = 3 ×5000=15000
Stamp duty fee for form No 14b Tsh 1200

Total cost is Tshs 257,200

Forcompany with share capital 5million to 20million
  Total Registration Cost Tshs 342200

For a company whose share capital is Million 20 to Million 50

Total Registration Cost is Tshs 372200

For a Company whose share Capital is More than 50 Million
Total registration cost is 522200

SUMMARY FOR BUDGET IN COMPANY REGISTRATION IN TANZANIA

	CompanyWhose share Capital;	Total Registration Cost (Tanzania shillings)
1	20,000 to 1 million	177200
2	1million to million 5	257200
3	5Million to 20 million	342200
4	20 million to 50million	372200
5	More than 50 million	522200

Stage 3
Congratulation you have already registered your company in Tanzania. You should get back to BRELA office after few days and receive your certificate of incorporation. It takes 2 days for a BRELA to process your company certificate.
All these processes take only 5 working days.
Step 4
You should get TIN (Tax Identification number). But to get TIN you should first pay initial tax. The tax approximation depend on the annual profit you expect.
Then they 30 of the your annual profit is what will be regarded as your tax.
For exampale, if your business will generate 2,000,000 profit each year
Then you will pay 30% of 2,000,000 that’s 600,000 as a tax

Step 5
Get a business license, and depend on the type of business you are doing. Each business has its specific license.

I hope this information are helpful and will point you toward register your business in Tanzania. If you have anything please do not hesitate to comment below or reach me out ta Hussein.Boffu@tanzaniapetroleum.com