The chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Mr. Taiwo Oyedele, has stated that his target is to reduce the number of taxes collected in Nigeria to less than ten.
According to The Punch, he made this statement on Tuesday in Abuja at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria’s 53rd annual conference.
Oyedele stated that over 62 taxes were formally collected at various levels of government in the country, which was a challenge for Nigerian business owners.
He criticized the various unofficial levies levied all throughout the country. Oyedele went on to say that he intended to ensure that there was only one revenue collection agency for each level of government.
“On the federal level,” he explained. Approximately 16 people are on the list formally at the state level, and there are 25 local governments. The narrative is lacking.
Unless you include the over 108 informal taxes collected all over the place, sometimes by non-state actors who have been enabled by government, either passively or aggressively.”
He continued, “In truth, Nigeria has wheelbarrow jobs and a bicycle tax. If you want to know what wickedness is, I believe it to be telling a man who is struggling to make ends meet that they haven’t paid their taxes while having them carry their wheelbarrow in the heat.
“What I want and hope to accomplish is a decrease in taxes to under 10, yeah, we want a single digit, and we also want to reduce revenue collection agencies to one for each level of government. With this, the federal government and state and local governments each have a single agency for collecting taxes. so that they can concentrate on fulfilling their main responsibility of making citizens’ lives easier.”
