Taxpayers are funding a £20 million scheme to make Ethiopia's tax system better for business by simplifying laws and training tax officers. With the aim of increasing Ethiopia's tax-to-GDP ratio from around 12 per cent to 17 per cent, the scheme will run until 2028. Due to difficulties achieving this at the required speed, the FCDO has shifted focus towards stabilising the current progress of the scheme.
Callum McGoldrick, the investigations campaign manager, said, “It is staggering that the FCDO is spending millions of pounds of hard-working taxpayers’ money to make a foreign country more attractive to businesses, especially when our own Government is making life ever harder for British businesses.
“We have the longest and most complex tax system in the world and are on the eve of yet another tax-raising Budget. Perhaps the Treasury would be a better recipient of aid to simplify our own tax code.
“It is about time that ministers aligned their priorities with the country and put taxpayers at home first.”
The full story is available in the Telegraph, here.