A Tax Dispute Can Now Be Settled Without an Appeal, Under a Law in Force Since July

Ethiopia's latest tax administration law has been in force since 30 July 2026, and it changes how a company argues with the tax authority. Writing in Addis Fortune, the tax lawyer Yehualashet Tamiru describes a short list of amendments to earlier legislation that carry more weight than their number suggests.

The central one is a formal conciliation mechanism for tax disputes. The law also revises the rules on assessments and on limitation periods.

What conciliation actually offers

Conciliation lets a taxpayer and the tax authority settle a dispute without running a full appeal. An independent conciliator helps the two sides reach an agreement, but cannot impose a binding decision on either of them. The process is voluntary and confidential.

Read plainly, that is a route out of a system whose main cost to business has never been the tax rate but the calendar. An appeal ties up management time, professional fees and — where a disputed assessment must be secured — working capital, for as long as it takes. A confidential process that can be entered by agreement and abandoned without prejudice changes the arithmetic of whether to fight an assessment at all.

The revisions to limitation periods matter for the same reason. A limitation period is the outer edge of a company's exposure to being reassessed on a year it thought was closed, and any movement in it moves the provision a finance director has to carry.

Open

The column does not say how conciliators are appointed, who pays for them, or whether the tax authority has issued the directives the mechanism will need in practice. The revised limitation periods are referred to but not specified. Nor is there yet any public indication of how many disputes have gone to conciliation in the two months since the law took effect.

Sources: Addis Fortune, 25 September 2026