Rich Nigerians on taxman radar in revenue drive

The Federal Government has said that its plan to begin taxing wealthy Nigerians more to increase the money it gets compared to the country’s total income will begin very soon.

Taiwo Oyedele, Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, mentioned this in a recent Bloomberg interview.

This, according to Oyedele, is part of President Bola Tinubu’s plan to reform the tax system, with the aim of reaching the 18 percent tax-to-income goal within the next three years.

According to him, the plan is to “make the rich pay what is fair, and those who are too poor can be protected. We also envisage a reduction in the corporate income tax rate to below the current effective rate of more than 40 percent to help boost business.”

Taiwo emphasised that the committee plans to use technology to expand tax collection and increase income.

Read also:Tinubu will avoid raising taxes, focus on reforms- Oyedele

He said, “We will find a way to create structures and systems around what taxes can be imposed, how it can be collected, who can collect it and how it should be accounted for.

“The goal is to slash the number of taxes down to single digits. We just identified the top eight, giving us 99 percent of the taxes, so we keep them, and the rest we get rid of.

“If people know that the government knows their income, where they are, and if they haven’t been paying their taxes, if we declare an amnesty, they will show up.”

Taiwo recently revealed that the Presidential Tax Committee doesn’t intend to raise taxes. Instead, he explained that the committee’s goal is to “harmonise revenue collection” to lessen the tax load.

According to him, “We do not intend to introduce new taxes or impose higher tax rates. Rather, our mandate is to reduce the number of taxes and levies while harmonising revenue collection to reduce the burden on the people and businesses.

“The objective is to avoid taxing investment, capital, production, or poverty. We plan to review and re-enact the major tax laws in a holistic manner, thereby limiting the necessity for frequent changes through annual finance acts.”