Tax Foreclosure and Tax Liens: Where Lies the Line?-A Case Comment

Abstract

Whilst the Ethiopian tax system undergone a series of piecemeal reforms over decades,1 a major overhaul occurred only in 2002. The 2002 tax law reform broadened tax bases, introduced new varieties of taxes, self-assessment procedures, and newer modalities of enforcing delinquent taxes. Of the later, incorporation of self-executing tax enforcement mechanisms was among the grand shifts in the country’s tax system. Previously, the only means of collecting delinquent taxes2 was through the costly and rather time consuming judicial execution. Alike ordinary creditors, the tax authority had just to queue before the office of judicial execution to have delinquent taxes enforced. disapproved judicial enforcement of delinquent taxes is now replaced by a set of self-executing enforcement schemes, namely ‘tax foreclosure’ and ‘tax liens’.