The Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce & Sectoral Association (ECCSA) is to negotiate with World Customs Organization (WCO) to buy a Harmonized System Database that will classify products for taxation purpose. This is initiated when WCO delegates urged each private company to have the database in order to classify imported products properly on Monday, October 21, 2012, at Ghion Hotel.
The WCO database will help tax payers to search the Harmonized System (HS) code of the product that they imported and hence will know the tariff that they are expected to pay immediately. An HS code is a number issued by the WCO, which will be assigned to each product that traded internationally.
“It is like a cell phone for a product,” a senior officer at the ERCA said. If traders classify their product properly, they will not be over taxed that could be cumbersome for their business or under taxed in which the government will forgo revenue. Currently, transitors are doing the job of classifying imported products based on the tariff book that is distributed by the Ministry of Finance & Economic Development (MoFED). The book, which has two volumes, is revised every five years.
Wamba Colince (left) and Djoumesi Kentack (right), both a member of WCO delegate with Fekade Bekele (center) director of customs evaluation at the Ethiopian Revenues & Customs Authority (ERCA) briefed those business owners that attended the meeting.
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