Over the past three decades governments in Ethiopia increasingly relied all indirect taxes to meet their fiscalrnneeds. Tax yields from such sources have been on the rise and seem to be insulated from the economic spiralrnwhich characterized the national economy during the years. Sales and Excise taxes have gone throughrnprofound transformations in terms of adjustments in statutory rates, coverage, and administrative efficiency_rnRevenue adequacy is a major yardstick by which tax systems in developing countries are gauged and this studyrnhas put to test the track record of the Ethiopian sales and excise taxes in this respect. Also on the notion thatrnformal incidence and effective incidence rarely overlap for commodity taxes the redistributive implications ofrnthe taxes have been analyzed.rnusing the proportional adjustment method to abstract from discretionary revenue effects and with the help of arnhistorical time series tax data regression results strongly indicate that sales and excise taxes have been buoyantrnand elastic. Still, the not-so-strong revenue effects of changes in tax handles, which came against thernbackground of their frequent application, need to be a concern of tax policy makers. On a different note, thernstudy. finds that the redistributive implications of the taxes are far from pro-poor. Nevertheless, any reform ofrnthe taxes on equity platform should take in to account the positive roles of the tax provision that exempts foodrnf rom these taxes and the structure of the excise taxes.