Gabriel Idahosa, president of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has advised the federal government to discontinue any further levies as multiple taxes do not translate to increase in revenue.
Idahosa made this known while he appeared as a guest on Arise TV on Tuesday morning.
He noted that revenue generation is the core mandate of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, asserting that other various agencies should be disallowed from creating levies which could overburden Nigerians.
“It’s not really possible to begin to raise money for every little thing in government. The whole approach is not the way to approach public finance in any country,” Idahosa said.
The LCCI chief further argued that issues of cybersecurity ought to be funded from the budget of the country as it is done in other developed countries.
He added that multiple taxes may not necessarily lead to higher revenue generation.
“The countries that are most efficient in tax collections are those with the minimum number of taxes,” the LCCI boss said.
“Not up to 40% of taxable persons and 60% of taxable organisations are taxed,” Idahosa stated.
This comment follows the directive of the Central Bank of Nigeria to banks to begin charging 0.5% for cybersecurity levy on any transactions made.
This order has generated heated conversations, especially as Nigerians are still yet to come off the shocks of the removal of the petrol subsidy.
Similarly, the country is witnessing a record high inflation, further hammering the spending power of the citizens.
In the face of the controversies that trailed the cybersecurity levy, President Bola Tinubu announced that the levy be suspended.
Meanwhile, the LCCI president recommended that there must be a concerted effort to improve the capacity of the Federal Inland Revenue Service to do the job of revenue collection rather than sequence of taxes from different agencies.
“The first thing to do is bring all the taxable people into the net, then tax them efficiently. You don’t even need to raise the tax. This is where the conversation on the cybersecurity levy should focus on,” he said.
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