Ministry of Revenue Issues Over 125,000 New Tax IDs Using Fayda

The Ministry of Revenue (MoR) announces issuing 128,000 new Tax Identification Numbers (TIN) using the Fayda Digital ID.

MoR, which is currently registering taxpayers for Digital ID at over 140 branches, shared figures during a briefing of the Ministry’s ten-month report today.

According to Aynalem Niguse, Minister of Revenue, integrating licensing with national IDs plays a major role in fighting forgery and streamlining the identity authentication process.

Since December 2023, Ethiopia’s tax registration system has been integrated with Fayda, ensuring each new TIN is linked to a corresponding Fayda number.

Ephrem Yoseph, Infrastructure and System Lead at the National ID Project Office told Shega that the Fayda-TIN integration has significantly reduced processing times, shortening the process to under an hour. “We use a VPN tunnel to securely share information between our systems,” Ephrem explained.

A recent analysis by the International Centre for Tax & Development (ICTD) suggests that integrating Ethiopia’s national ID system with its tax system could enhance tax data quality, improve the taxpayer experience, strengthen compliance monitoring and enforcement, and ultimately expand the country’s tax base.

“As Ethiopia’s economy grows and evolves, both federal and regional tax administrations have been losing significant revenue due to tax evasion, rampant fake receipts, and fraud,” the ICTD analysis reads. The government is currently working to map existing TINs in the tax system to their corresponding Fayda numbers.

Ethiopian law mandates that businesses obtain a Tax Identification Number (TIN). A TIN is a unique federal-level identifier, and only one is required per business owner regardless of the number or location of their businesses. To date, Ethiopia has issued 1.8 million business licenses.

“To increase Ethiopia’s revenue, we must implement a modern and efficient revenue collection system that departs from traditional methods,” said Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) in a separate event today.

The MoR has collected over 425 billion birr during the past ten months of the current Ethiopian fiscal year, achieving 96% of its target. The Ministry aims to collect 529 billion birr for the current fiscal year.