City Calls to Dismiss Tax Fraud Charges

The City Administration is waiting for the approval of the Attorney General to drop charges on 1,780 taxpayers who are accused of tax fraud.

The request was filed with the Office of the Attorney General by Deputy Mayor Takele Uma. The Deputy Mayor called to drop the charges following a petition signed by 4,000 business people that was filed with the Addis Abeba Revenues Authority last December.

“After reviewing the request of the petitioners,” said Shisema Gebreselassie, director general of the Authority, “the City Administration and we reviewed the cases and found out that most of the crimes were minor offences or committed unintentionally.”

The Authority, which has collected 18.7 billion Br in the first half of the current fiscal year, submitted the findings along with a recommendation to Deputy Mayor Takele, who also agreed with the suggestion to drop the charges.

Some businesses have been dealing with the issue for the last two years after they were charged for making transactions without issuing value-added tax (VAT) receipts. Most of the businesses were small cafes and kiosks. Since then, the cases have been under court trial and have reached various stages- while some of them have already been convicted, other cases are still pending in the courts.

The approval from the Office of the Attorney General may dismiss the court cases and release jailed individuals after reviewing all the legal procedures, according to Shisema.

The Office of the Attorney General is reviewing the request and will announce its decision once the review process is completed, according to Zinabu Tunu, communications director at the Attorney General Office.

“It is very easy to shut down shops or sue their owners,” said Takele during his discussion at the end of last week with businesses operating in Merkato, “But we know we won’t achieve our goals by being too aggressive. Instead, we want to get closer to you.”

Currently, no less than 40pc of the city’s economy operates in the shadows, according to a study presented during the discussion that was organised by the Authority, which plans to collect 33.5 billion Br this fiscal year from direct and indirect taxes. The city government has set a 46 billion Br budgetary revenue plan for this fiscal year.

The Authority has a total of 336,173 taxpayers, of which over half of them are ‘category C’ taxpayers that have an annual turnover of less than half a million Birr.