Tax professionals on Wednesday highlighted their expectations from the incoming administration, with emphasis on harmonising taxes rather than increasing them.
They said the incoming administration would ensure harmonisation, digitization of taxes, security, education, and stakeholder engagement.
This was the unanimous expectation from the panelists who led discussions on ‘stakeholders’ Perspective on Repositioning the African Tax System for Sustainable Revenue Generation: Nigeria as a Case Study ‘, at the ongoing 25th annual conference of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN) in Abuja.
The panelists included Killian Khanoba, partner, Pedabo, Esiri Agbeyi, partner, Private Clients and Family Business Leader, PwC Nigeria, Abdallah Ali-Nakyea, senior lecturer, school of Law, University of Ghana, Zainab Gobir, executive director, Nigeria Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), and Lolade Ososami, partner, Udo Udoma & Bello Osagie, who moderated the panel.
While Gobir expects diversity in policy-making, Killian said, “Key advice really is not to continue to repeat the same mistakes that have repeated over and over again. We need to look critically at what are those things that are affecting the productivity of business in Nigeria. What are those things that are affecting employment generation in Nigeria? How do we give a boost to the small and medium scale enterprises so that they can employ more people and give them the opportunity to grow into bigger businesses, who will ultimately contribute to tax generation.”
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“We need to improve on security. People need to feel secure. We need to educate our people because studies have shown that the education of the people is a key factor to voluntary tax compliance. So the more people are educated, the more likely they are to voluntarily pay taxes without any prompting. Also there should be transparency people should feel to have the perception that the government is actually working for them.
He said people’s perception of democracy, people’s perception of the effectiveness of governance contributes to compliance with tax and contributes to the tax revenue generation.
He also noted the issue of many taxes in Nigeria, saying at the last count, there was about 54 different types of taxes.
“And if you look at the contribution to the tax backstage itself, most of these modern noise taxes I call them that. If you put them all together, they contribute just about 18 percent. So why do we have them yet they create the biggest distortion to the smooth operation of businesses in Nigeria,” he said.
“We need to begin to see how we can consolidate our taxes so that we can simplify the process of tax compliance for people. So we need to digitalize the tax environment,” Killian said, stressing the need to standardise the tax processes across authorities.
Agbeyi said, “We need to harmonise it and not increase tax rates. We have a lot of taxes coupled together. The cost of doing business is quite high. When we look at the telecom sector, they have over 40 taxes that they pay across different governments, right of way charges are also very high, which impedes our growth in the digital space as well. And that effectively affects financial inclusion, even for the underserved in society. So technology is very critical.”
