In a press conference held to discuss the tax collection performance of the Ethiopian Revenues and Customs Authority (ERCA), Moges Balcha, the director, announced that the amount of tax collected in the past four months is less than the planned revenue.
The authority that had planned to collect 72 billion birr in the four months collected 62 billion birr which Moges said is only 27 percent when compared to the plan for the fiscal year. He admitted that, in order for this collection to be called healthy, it should have reached at least 33 percent.
For the 2017/18 fiscal year, ERCA was given an assignment by the House of Peoples’ Representatives to collect 199.11 billion birr which the authority extended to 230 billion birr.
The annual budget for the current fiscal year is 320.8 billion birr.
However, the current collection status has posed a question whether the plan for the fiscal year will be achieved.
In the past four months, apart from low compliance, there were also challenges in insuring that the tax payers respect the law. Hence, the Authority took legal measures on 81 taxpayers; the majority of which are from Mercato.
