Some Remarks on the Anomalies in the Ethiopian Tax Legislative Process

Abstract

Ignorance of the legislative process on the part of legal academics has been a cause for concern for so long. Several decades back, an American writer rebuked lawyers’ reluctance, not just for researching the subject, but for taking far less effort to understand it. He had even capitalized the ‘disturbing’ state of the ignorance by epitomizing it as ‘deliberate ignorance’. This concern is still lingering in the academic sphere and bureaucracy six decades after Moffat expressed his lament. A relatively recent survey has revealed the very little attention paid both in the academic literature and in recurrent technical assistance missions of global financial institutions to legislative processes, especially to the tax legislative process in developing and transitional economies. These sorts of problems are also rampant in Ethiopia. But, this might not be that much surprising given the dearth of scholars in the field and the scan literature on the subject in the country. There are flaws of various sorts, particularly in the tax legislative process.4 This brief reflection seeks to put up examples of such problems upfront and asks why these problems are still left to reign for nearly two decades after the Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia has been put in place. It questions why the meager literature on the subject is still shying away from the problem. However, it should be clear at the outset that this piece does not purport to offer a conclusive analysis of the problems in this area and it doesn’t pretend to forward comprehensive solutions. The piece is organized as follows. First, it explains what is meant by “legislative process” in this context, and then it goes on to raise some anomalies. Finally, it closes with some suggestions.