The chairman of the presidential committee on tax policy and fiscal reforms, Taiwo Oyedele, has stated that the value-added tax on automotive petrol oil, popularly known as diesel, should be suspended.
According to Channels Television, Oyedele stated that President Bola Tinubu’s directive to suspend the VAT will mitigate the negative economic effects of the elimination of gasoline subsidies.
“What the President wants us to do is that within the first 30 days, there are those low-hanging fruits that people have generally agreed that this is a problem but nobody has done anything about it,” said Oyedele.
“Personally, I believe that the VAT on diesel should be suspended because the fuel subsidy on petrol was abolished and prices are rising. However, this is not a promise that it will be implemented.
“We’ll present it to the committee.” The things listed here are what we hope to accomplish in the first 30 days, he said.
Tinubu nominated Oyedele, a former fiscal policy partner and Africa tax leader at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, to lead the group, whose mandate includes fiscal governance, tax changes, and growth facilitation.
Oyedele went on to say that the Fiscal Responsibility Act specifies that the nation’s fiscal governance include matters such as the debt ceiling, the deficit to Gross Domestic Product ratio, reporting revenue creation, and the quality of government spending.
He continued, saying there is a huge tax shortfall that is “estimated in the region of 20 trillion or even more.”
The middle class and the elite in particular, according to Oyedele, make up a large portion of those who fall within the tax net but don’t adhere to the rules of paying taxes, noting that “some of them are in the tax net with one or two fingers.” In fact, our strategy is to eliminate many of the taxes that currently make doing business difficult while also collecting more money.
According to Oyedele, Nigeria has some of the lowest tax revenues in the entire globe.
He said that the Federal Inland Income Service should be given primary responsibility for collecting income in order for the country’s economy to gain from revenue growth while reducing the revenue generation burden on the Federal Government’s Ministries, Departments, and Agencies.
The committee chair stated, “At the Federal Government level alone, we had 63 MDAs that were given revenue targets in the 2023 budget,” and further stated, “These agencies are being distracted from their primary function, which is to facilitate the economy.”
He also mentioned that such agencies’ tax collection efforts would be ineffective because “they were not set up to collect revenue.”
In addition to creating a million new employment in the digital economy, Oyedele revealed that the committee will be “very intentional” in paying attention to the details.
He added that the one-year period was “purposefully” put up, with one year allotted for the implementation of its programs.
