FG to Tax Dangote, Mike Adenuga, Arthur Eze, other Billionaires To Grow Revenues

FG has vowed to Tax Dangote, Mike Adenuga, and Arthur Eze among other Billionaires in Nigeria more in order to grow revenues.

NewsOnline Nigeria reports that President Bola Tinubu Federal Government plans to review its tax rate for affluent persons in Nigeria to a level it considers fair, to protect the poor and ultimately expand the revenue of the country.

This Nigeria News platform understands that the plan is also aimed at arresting commonplace evasion in an economy with one of the world’s lowest tax collections in proportion to GDP.

It also seeks a cut to corporate income tax, which currently stands at 40 per cent, and will propose tax amnesty to encourage evaders to settle backlogs.

The idea is that the fiscal reforms will ease the path for Africa’s biggest economy to tax-to-GDP ratio to 18 per cent by 2026, from its present 10.9 per cent, Bloomberg reported Thursday, quoting Taiwo Oyedele, who heads the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms.

“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,” he said in reference to the government’s move to redeem Nigeria’s bad name for multiple taxation.

Nearly 70 different taxes are paid in Nigeria, Mr Oyedele affirmed, the target being to prune them to single digits.

“We just identified the top eight giving us 99 per cent of the taxes, so we keep them, and the rest we get rid of,” he said.

Nigeria, Africa’s biggest crude producer, is in a drive to expand much-needed revenue after perennial oil theft denied the country the windfalls from the current oil boom, forcing the government to shift away from its fixation on the commodity.

At 96.3 per cent, its debt-to-revenue ratio leaves President Bola Tinubu pretty little room to borrow to finance its spending plan, stoking the urgency to revamp the tax structure to bolster earnings.

Fewer than one out of every 16 companies in Nigeria actively pay tax, according to the data provided by Mr Oyedele, who until this year was the fiscal policy partner and Africa tax leader at PricewaterHouse Coopers

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

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