Ethiopia diaspora business Owners must return home for fingerprints - RCuA

August 24th, 2009 | EthioPolitics.com |

By Yohannes Anberbir, Capital

Owners of businesses in Ethiopian and living abroad have been told they must return to Addis Ababa to give their fingerprints the country’s Revenue and Customs Authority’s (RCuA). This is part of an ongoing programme to build a database of tax payer’s fingerprints.

Several businesses in Addis Ababa have a local manager but are owned by Ethiopians or citizens of other countries who are currently living abroad.

The new requirement means that even if responsibility for paying taxes rests with a local employee, owners must still travel to the country as the RCuA will not accept fingerprints taken from a representative or remotely.

“Administering the owners property and paying taxes are the only thing the local managers are accountable for,” Tedla Mitiku communication officer of The City Revenue Agency told Capital.
“It is expensive for the authority to open fingerprint collection centers at Ethiopian embassies abroad and link them with the authority’s data base here. However the authority will schedule a program for the Diaspora after concluding the ongoing collection,” said Tedla.

If the business owners can travel now it is possible to take their fingerprints. If not traveling to Ethiopia is a must as soon as the authority announces its program.

Over 450,000 tax payers are required to provide their fingerprints in Addis Ababa within the 45 days program launched by the authority. The later has collected over 140,000 fingerprints as of Friday and the remaining 310,000 taxpayers are expected to comply within the remaining one week, unless the authority extends its program. As yet, RCuA has not announced any extension of the program.

This fingerprint collection with a system that also collects and stores tax payers’ photograph and profiles costs the government over 66 million birr.

The system was installed to prevent tax offences. Prior to this, a business worth over 100,000 birr revenue a year would be given a Tax Identification Number (TIN). The old system allowed businesses to have more than one TIN and so splitting the value of their business to avoid paying high revenues.

Individuals were accused of using aliases to claim that one business was in fact two.
The Revenue and Customs Authority has required all Addis Ababa tax payers to give their fingerprints, including business owners, government and private employees and university students currently benefiting from the cost sharing scheme.

Business owners can give their fingerprints at authorized stations established in the sub city where their businesses are located. Employees are also required to give their fingerprints at the same sub city as their employer.

Business owners can only give fingerprints at another sub city if they have another business there, according to Efrem Mekonnen, public relation manager of the authority.

“Currently we are concentrating on collecting the fingerprints and the system will reject any duplication of fingerprints,” said Efrem.