29% of Ethiopia’s Largest Taxpayers Generate 80% of Revenue and Just 31 State Firms Account for 42%

#EBR_News Aug 3, 2026

A striking revenue concentration sits at the heart of Ethiopia’s large taxpayer system: fewer than three in ten registered companies within the country’s Large Taxpayers Branch Office are responsible for generating four-fifths of everything it collects.

Figures presented by the Ministry of Revenue’s Large Taxpayers Branch Office at Skylight Hotel show that the office collected 522.67 billion birr in the 2025/26 fiscal year from 746 registered taxpayers. However, 29 percent of these taxpayers accounted for 80 percent of the total revenue, while the remaining 71 percent contributed only 20 percent.

The breakdown by taxpayer category makes the imbalance even more stark. According to the presentation, state-owned enterprises numbering just 31 companies, or four percent of the 746-strong taxpayer base contributed 217.87 billion birr, representing 42 percent of all branch revenue.

Foreign direct investment private companies, comprising 127 taxpayers or 17 percent of the base, added 102.24 billion birr (20%), while 50 banks and insurance companies contributed 65.37 billion birr (12%). The remaining 532 private companies’ 71 percent of all registered taxpayers generated only 104.60 billion birr, or 20 percent of total revenue.

The top ten taxpayers alone crystallize this concentration. The presentation showed that ten companies together paid 254.44-billion-birr 48.71 percent of total branch revenue with Ethio Telecom Share Company leading at 65.84 billion birr (12.60%), followed by Commercial Bank of Ethiopia at 36.87 billion birr and Ethiopian Airlines Group at 30.87 billion birr. Eight of those ten spots are held by state-owned or government-linked entities, with Heineken Breweries Share Company and Awash Bank Share Company the only private companies in the group.

This pattern is not unique to Ethiopia. According to the presentation, IMF guidance recommends categorizing taxpayers into large, medium, small, and micro tiers, and the global norm is for large taxpayers representing just one to 1.5 percent of the total taxpayer population to generate more than 70 percent of total revenue.

Ethiopia’s large taxpayer segment broadly fits that model, though the degree of concentration within the large taxpayer group itself where a handful of public enterprises dominate reflects the particular structure of Ethiopia’s economy, where state-owned companies control the telecoms, aviation, banking, power, and logistics sectors.

The numbers also reveal the fiscal work the system still cannot extract from its private segment. Five hundred and thirty-two private companies registered as large taxpayers contributed an average of roughly 197 million birr each last year while Ethio Telecom alone paid 65.84 billion birr. Even Awash Bank, the top-ranked domestic private taxpayer, paid 15.77 billion birr, nearly 80 times the average private company contribution within the same portfolio.

The challenge that this concentration poses is an explicit one in the branch’s own planning documents. For 2026/27, the office has been assigned a revenue target of 816.70 billion birr 56 percent above what it collected in 2025/26 representing 76 percent of the country’s entire domestic tax revenue target. Achieving that on the back of the same narrow cluster of state enterprises and a handful of large private firms is a structural risk.

The presentation acknowledged persistent compliance failures among smaller taxpayers, including under-declaration of sales, circulation of fake invoices, and failure to submit audited financial statements on time suggesting the gap between what the private sector earns and what it declares remains a material one.