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The Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation (MOFEC) tabled a draft directive to license tax agents to represent tax payers. The bill which was presented to the business community for consultation made Accounting, Management, Economics and Law Bachelor Degree holders eligible for the license.
Five years of experience at a tax agency job and possession of a business license to provide this service are among criteria needed to become a representative. ERCA is responsible for evaluating the competence of agents and monitoring their activities.
The agent will represent the clients regarding every aspect of tax related issues including declaring taxes, complaints and representing their interests.
The law was deemed necessary because tax payers wanted a professional to help them navigate the tax system.
ERCA will give trainings prior to issuing a license to the agents followed by a written test. A candidate must score above 50% to get a competence certificate, according to the draft.
Two different levels of licenses are being presented by the draft where one is an agent who can represent every type of taxpayer and another is an agent which cannot represent Level A taxpayers.
The agents are prohibited from declining to answer clarification presented by the Authority, undertaking activities without renewing their license and undertaking agent activities which are not in the permitted levels and in addition, must follow other income tax laws.
The national Audit Board believes only accountants should be allowed to be tax agents and not other degree holders.
“If the role of the tax agent is limited to liaison responsibility we can agree but if the activity is extended to the entire financial activities it will be a regrettable decision by the government,” said Gashe Yemane Desta, CEO of the board.
Gashe believes that the application of the directive will incur additional cost to the tax payer who will be obliged to hire an auditor to do the financial work and to hire an agent to communicate with the Authority. He cited the United Sates’ experience of allowing agents from other professions because of the imbalance between the business community and professionals which he believes to be not the case in Ethiopia.
“There are enough accountants in Ethiopia which can do the professional work,” he said.
The bill also demanded a guarantee of 10,000 birr for a level one agent and 50,000 birr for level two agents.
The draft will come into effective after the Minister, Abraham Tekeste (PhD), of MoFEC signed its approval.

Dashen’s Amole

Local News

July 23, 2018

Ethiopia may finally be catching up with Kenya as Dashen Bank launched the digital channel platform called ‘Amole’ which will allow subscribers to pay for products and services using their mobile phones.
In other African countries this has become a popular way for people to pay for virtually everything from groceries to personal services allowing for people to purchase items without carrying a large amount of cash.
At the launch of Amole, Hidase Telecom, Dstv, Shoa Supermarket, Lomi, ETTA, Zmall, Meda and Sami Dan exhibited their products and services which use the Amole Digital payment platform to over 500 attendees.

Fake products wipe out toilet paper company

Local News

admin

July 23, 2018

MAMCO Paper Products P.L.C. is considering closing doors after 24 years of making paper, toilet and soft tissue. The company which is affiliated with MIDROC said that lower quality products being passed off as its own are behind the problem. They have asked the government for help but to no avail.
“The company is planning to lay off many employees,” said MAMCO’s attorney.
Research conducted last year by the company indicated that fake products are being distributed throughout Ethiopia. They found fake products being sold by at least 11 shops in Mercato.
Their study showed fake and real products being sold alongside each other or presented as different categories of products.
Ethiopian Revenues and Customs Authority (ERCA) is losing a large amount of revenue from this giant illegal market chain because these illegal manufactures are not paying taxes. The distributors are also not giving receipts for the fake products, the research report stated.
The fake products are also said to have caused respiratory problems and tarnishing the company’s trademark, the report went on to say.
The chain of the forged products and the findings of the research were reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), an investigation wing of the Federal Police, according to Teka Mahari, the company’s attorney.
“The Bureau of Investigation has only arrested three of the distributers,” said the attorney.
“Police negligence has taken our last share of hope in finding the manufactures or staying in the market”.
The research team told Capital that negligence of different parts of the government bodies is costing the nation a fortune and discouraging loyal investors.
“We do all the assignments for police and using the data we gave them as an informant, they could have traced the manufacturer,” the attorney told Capital. “But they always complain about not having enough human resources for the intelligence and investigation team”.
“We have limited personnel working on intelligence but we are doing all we can to solve the crisis,” said Commander Berhanu Abate of the FBI’s Trade Competition and Protection Directorate Director. “We are investigating the facts to find out the source”.
The company’s marketing manager refrained from disclosing the amount of damage caused to the company.
MAMCO which is the sister company of MIDROC was established in 1994 and produces toilet tissue, facial tissue, exercise books and napkin products.

New service reduces surgery waitlist as 10,000 still on hold

Local News

July 23, 2018

A shortage of surgeons and medical machines is causing over 10,000 patients to be on waiting lists for surgery at public hospitals.
Due to a shortage of surgeons and medical machines more than 10,000 patients are on waiting lists in Tikur Anbessa , St.Paul, and Zewditu hospitals and the eight additional government hospitals in Addis Ababa.
Most of the patients are from rural areas of Ethiopia and have been waiting for operations between six months and three years. These include: heart, eye, bone, brain and other internal organ operations. According to the Ministry of Health there were 12,000 on the wait list two months ago but that number has gone down to 10,000 thanks to the help of St. Peter and Ammanuel Hospitals’, new services. Yordanos Alebachew, Public Relations Officer at the Ministry of Health told Capital that 1,600 people will get the new service (new operation) in the next two months.
“We are doing our best to get people operations when they need them, we hope thousands more will be operated on soon.’’
There is no research on how many people died while waiting for operations.
Ashanafi Ambire, Public Relations officer for St. Peter Specialized Hospital told Capital that the new service will play an important role in reducing pain and fatalities for patients waiting for an operation.
“It is sad to see people die when they are waiting for surgery. We are specialized in TB cases but to help alleviate the burden of other hospitals we have performed 190 operations.’’
Until recently, Ethiopia had just one physician for every 100,000 people, but now the country is increasing the number of doctors.
In the past few years, the government opened 13 new medical schools, which more than doubled the number of medical institutions in the country. Ethiopia has also been increasing enrollment at existing schools.
Currently, Addis Ababa has 12 state run and more than 40 private hospitals. Many of the later were built in the past 21 years. In sharp contrast however, all of the state run hospitals were built more than 30 years ago. For a city of an estimated over five million, state run hospitals are the best medical care alternative centers used mostly by the middle-to-low income inhabitants of the country. However, Black Lion hospital is the largest referral hospital in the country where even the sick wealthy are referred to before flying out of the country.
Ethiopia is one of the countries in the world with low health workforce density of 0.7/1000.