Lagos State commissioner for finance, Rabiu Olowo, says stakeholders in the nation’s economy must embrace taxation post covid-19.
Olowo made the assertion during a two-day academic symposium of the Centre for Business Taxation, Oxford University.
Rabiu, who is among over a hundred public finance and tax experts from across the globe who attended the online event, noted that oil has always been unreliable and lessons from the Covid-19 crises have further affirmed this position.
He stated that that from discussions at the Oxford symposium, developing and oil-dependent countries have been left far behind in the areas of taxation.
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According to the commissioner, Nigeria’s current tax to GDP ratio of between 4 to 7 percent is very far from satisfactory.
“This has been an issue for some time but the Covid-19 economic crisis provides a renewed opportunity for stakeholders to frontally confront this problem. We cannot be waiting for oil to develop our country when its volatility is a well-known problem. We need to summon the politically will to embrace tax. We cannot be doing the same thing and expect different results,” he said.
Olowo further noted that there is hardly any developed country without effective taxation. Even the gulf oil producers are now embracing taxation despite their lower population, higher oil reserves and lower cost of oil production. The advanced countries are no longer discussing whether to tax or not but are now deliberating on how to manipulate policies for optimum impact. Here we are still thinking of how to tax. From discussions at the symposium, it is obvious we are losing billions of dollars to tax manipulation by multinationals and we should look into this urgently.
Speaking he said: “For government, there is need to engage more with citizens on tax and to gain trust through such engagements. In Lagos state, Governor Sanwo-Olu has been exemplary in working round the clock to engage citizens”
He further admonished tax administrators to re-double their efforts and to treat taxpayers as clients who deserve to be served. He stated that other state governments and their tax authorities can learn from the Lagos Internal Revenue Service (LIRS) which is recording significant success despite the Covid-19 crisis. He urged the media to focus more on taxation, adding, “the media appears to favour sensationalism in reporting EFCC and public frauds but neglects the huge gap in taxation. The media must also remember that uncollected public revenues are as bad as misappropriated funds.”
The advised the citizens, saying “if we evade or pay lower taxes, we should expect lower quality of governance. Most of the countries we admire are built on high tax-high quality governance. We cannot be an exception.”
