{"id":84177,"date":"2025-08-21T05:12:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T05:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/84177\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T05:12:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T05:12:08","slug":"ethiopia-orders-vat-on-over-the-counter-medicines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/84177\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethiopia Orders VAT on Over-the-Counter Medicines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The Ministry of Revenues has instructed tax authorities to levy value-added tax on over-the-counter medicines, confirming that such products fall within the scope of existing legislation.<\/p>\n<p>A directive issued on August 14, 2025, calls for enforcement measures against pharmaceutical companies that have not complied with tax requirements since the law came into force.<\/p>\n<p>The notice was circulated to the minister\u2019s office, the tax system sector, medium taxpayer branches and the West Addis Ababa small taxpayers office. It instructs that over-the-counter medicines be treated as taxable supplies and outlines measures to ensure compliance.<\/p>\n<p>Ethiopia introduced its VAT framework in 2003, with the latest revision setting a 15 percent standard rate on most goods and services. Prescription medicines, basic food items and certain medical supplies remain exempt. A recent directive reviewed VAT-exempt categories but largely preserved exemptions for prescription drugs.<\/p>\n<p>The pharmaceutical market depends heavily on imports, with over-the-counter products accounting for a sizeable share of non-prescription medicine consumption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ministry of Revenues has instructed tax authorities to levy value-added tax on over-the-counter medicines, confirming that such&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[64,63,137,490],"class_list":{"0":"post-84177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-medication"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}