The Harsh Reality Facing Firms Accused of Tax Evasion and their Employees
The subject of tax evasion, which refers to illegal practices used to escape from taxation, embraces many dimensions and problems. Global Financial Integrity estimates a sum of USD285 billion economic loss occurs in developing countries a year because of tax evasion. Although the exact figure is hard to find in Ethiopia due to insufficient data and different estimation techniques, tax evasion activities remain one of the major problem in Ethiopia. Even recently, the government announced that 135 companies were implicated in tax evasion activities, totaling around ETB14 billion. However, companies which are accused of involvement in tax evasion, as well as tax experts, stress that the gaps in the tax law is costing businesses unnecessary money, on top of leaving thousands of employees jobless as EBR’s Ashenafi Endale reports.