The Islamic Finance in Relationship to the Financing and the Taxation of Small and Medium Enterprises in Tunisia

Abstract

The present article aims to improve the understanding on how the Islamic financial contribute to the financing of small and medium enterprises (SME) in Tunisia. It discusses the difficulty of accessing to finance and the principles of the Islamic finance that most it brings to Tunisian SMEs. It adopts an exploratory survey approach in a population Tus, our survey was carried out on the basis of a sample of thirty SMEs operating in the city of Gafsa, and which working in various several sectors, and which are selected at randomly. The findings show that, the tax optimization of Islamic financing in the case of SMEs requires an adapted approach from the Tunisian tax administration. In this case, the amount of taxes payable would be close to that payable on the occasion of a conventional credit arrangement. The findings stipulate that the access to bank financing in Tunisia is difficult or even impossible due to several factors such as the lack of guarantees, numerous requirements, hard bureaucracy, lack of personal relations within the bank. The use of Islamic financing is important since more than half of the entrepreneurs have used Islamic finance products, the most of the entrepreneurs who have used Islamic financing have chosen the Murabaha type of financing with a percent of 80%, and the majority of entrepreneurs are satisfied with the products offered by Islamic institutions (56%). Islamic financial, SMEs, Murabaha, survey approach, Tunisia