Ethiopia: Ministry of Revenues e-tax and telebirr tax payments

Paying taxes with telebirr

Ethio telecom announced on 2 February 2023 that it had signed a strategic partnership agreement with the Ministry of Revenues to collect tax payments through telebirr ¹. The company statement says the steps below apply ¹.

• Log in to the e-tax service at www.mor.gov.et and complete the required steps ¹.
• Use the document number issued by the Ministry to pay from a private or institutional telebirr account, by app or USSD code *127# ¹.
• Receive the receipt by email after payment ¹.

What Ethio telecom says the service offers

The company says payers get real-time clearance and a receipt, can make partial payments and can settle overdue payments. It says this helps avoid penalties caused by delays in updating taxpayer records ¹.

At the time of the agreement Ethio telecom reported 28.2 million telebirr customers, links with 18 banks for transfers into telebirr and 15 banks for transfers out, and over ETB 263 billion transacted ¹. These are company figures.

History of e-filing

Ethiopia has rolled out e-tax systems since 2009, as reported by Bersabeh Gebre of Addis Fortune on 12 February 2022 ². The former Revenues and Customs Authority launched an e-filing system in 2015, developed by TYC Web Design & Development ². At the time of the report the Ministry of Revenues had been testing a newer e-tax payment system for three years and was piloting e-payment with the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia ².

A 2024 working paper published by the International Centre for Tax and Development studied e-filing adoption among large and medium taxpayers. It used tax records to measure how timely VAT and corporate income tax returns were and how much tax was declared ³.

Addis Ababa city taxes

The Addis Ababa Revenues Bureau began e-filing in December 2021 for about 1,000 large taxpayers with annual turnover above ETB 40 million ². It planned to bring Category A and B taxpayers, about 124,000 in all, into the system ².

The bureau introduced a platform called Et-Tax for Category C taxpayers, those with turnover under ETB 500,000 ². Custor Computing Plc, a domestic IT firm, won a five-year contract worth ETB 14 million to develop and maintain Et-Tax ². The bureau agreed with the Information Network Security Agency to upgrade its system and link it to the Derash national payment platform. Sixteen of 18 commercial banks had joined Derash ².

The bureau collected ETB 31.5 billion in the first six months of the fiscal year, against an annual target of ETB 48.5 billion ².

Electronic invoice accreditation

Under the Electronic Invoice System Administration Directive No. 1142/2018, the Ministry of Revenues created a board to inspect, accredit and monitor e-invoicing systems, as reported by Surafel Ashebir of The Reporter on 4 July 2026 ⁴. Providers need cybersecurity certification before accreditation and must be accredited before they market or deploy products ⁴. Financial guarantees range from US$15,000 for large taxpayers building their own software to US$250,000 for large enterprise system providers ⁴.