My African Legend 4---I am at the Hawassa Electricity Bureau and Taxation Bureau in Ethiopia

It has been a month since I came to Africa. During this time, I have been responsible for the company's power outage application. Yesterday I went to the tax bureau to pay taxes, but was threatened by the tax bureau staff to be sent to jail. You must be curious about the reason, and I will tell you next.

? Ethiopia is a country that attaches great importance to tax. When we go to the store, no matter what we buy, we have to pay 15% tax. If you write a check to someone else, there is also a 2% withholding tax involved. This time I went to the tax bureau to pay personal income tax when the company pays wages. It turned out to be our company’s first tax payment! Never paid taxes before! So when I submitted our March tax payment form to the tax bureau clerk, a person who looked like a leader asked me for the previous taxes.

? Our company told me to say this: We have been working here for a month now. As a result, as soon as I finished speaking, everyone else in the tax bureau office stared at me. The leader said that he knew the supervisor of our company and that we had started construction in August last year. The tax must be paid, otherwise he would have the right to deport me. Sent to jail.

In Ethiopia, tax evasion is definitely a serious crime. They have the right to investigate the company and send the relevant responsible persons to prison. I hesitated and couldn't explain clearly. They happened to have a meeting, so I decided to go to the tax bureau to file taxes next Monday.

? At this point, you may be thinking, why has the company never filed a tax return before, but now it suddenly gets crazy and starts to pay taxes? According to the company, only when the tax is paid can the project funds here be obtained. It can be seen that whether a company pays taxes or not is more about considering its own interests.

From my experience at the tax bureau yesterday, you can understand that even state-owned enterprises cannot engage in tax evasion overseas. Not only does it violate local laws, but it also makes the staff the scapegoat. Ethiopia attaches great importance to taxation, which shows that taxation is an important source of government revenue. Of course, this is also the reason why the government imposes excessive taxes and double taxation, making it a hotbed of corruption.

? Next let’s talk about the local power bureau. My city is Hawassa, so we mainly discuss the power bureau in this place. As a translator, I am also responsible for submitting the company's power outage application, because we can only lay out the power lines for construction if the power outage is successful. Since I arrived, I have found that it has become increasingly difficult to get approval for power outages.

? It is said that some time before I came here, there was no need to apply for a power outage at all. You only needed to go to the Electricity Bureau to find an electrician to cut off the power on the spot. When I first came here, I had to print out the application and submit it to them for approval, but fortunately, it only took about 2 days to get it approved. Now, low-voltage power outage applications must be stamped first, and after stamping, ask their leaders to sign. Their leaders are basically meeting every day, especially "many things to do", so it usually takes about 5 days to approve; medium voltage power outage applications need to be approved 15 days in advance. Make an appointment on the same day, submit it to the Capital Adis Electricity Bureau for approval, and then issue the documents here.

Why is it becoming more and more difficult? First of all, the power outage has indeed caused inconvenience to the lives of local people. People will call the electricity bureau to complain, so they hope to notify the people in advance. In addition, I think it is also related to our sometimes changing plans. For example, yesterday the so-called leader The inspection forced me to advance my original plan for today to yesterday. The electrician responsible for the outage was also uncooperative. Sometimes you can't find him no matter whether you go to his home or the electricity bureau, and you can't get through on the phone. When you ask, you find out that he is out there, not in the urban area of ??Hawassa. This also caused a lot of difficulties in our power outage.

Through my description, I believe readers have discovered that I do not take sides between the company and the local office. The local offices are indeed inefficient. For example, the tax bureau knew that our company was in tax arrears but did not take any measures before. For example, the power bureau could not actively cooperate with the power outage. However, there are indeed big problems with some of our company's behaviors. If we don't solve them in time, I believe the problems will become more and more numerous and eventually become difficult to recover from.

? As a translator? Copywriter? Clerk? Accountant, what can you do for me? It’s more of a helplessness!