The Federal Government plans to review its existing tax incentives to further block revenue leakages in the system.
Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed who spoke yesterday on the sideline of the conference of African Ministers of Finance and Economic Planning in Addis Ababa Ethiopia, said with the decline in oil revenue, the government had started strengthening tax revenue collection agencies and processes. She said: “We are also expanding our tax base by trying to bring as many people and organisations that are in the informal sector not paying tax into the tax net.
“We are also pulling back some of the waivers that we feel are absolutely unnecessary and are rather slowing down the economy and are simply a drain on our resources. We are trying to bring in revenue that was not properly harnessed from government-owned entreprises that were before now, making money and spending it with little or no returns to the government.”
Ahmed said President Muhammadu Buhari administration plans to continue to finance its subsequent budgets through non-oil sector revenue which was why it was very serious about blocking all leakages in the tax system.
Head of Policy Advocacy and Campaign Manager, Actionaid Nigeria, Mr Tunde Aremu who spoke at the event also said if the government was looking at reviewing its tax policies, it should focus on tax concessions given to multinationals.
He said: “What Nigeria is losing through the granting of tax incentives is an average of $2.9 billion every year. That is huge and unnecessary. “We think it’s absurd that a country with a large population like Nigeria with purchasing power still thinks it needs to give tax incentives to attract investors.
“Nigeria needs to look at its tax policies in terms of the types of provisions it has that gives concessions to multinationals and other laws guiding the granting of incentives in Nigeria. We’ve discovered that there are several agencies that play the role of granting incentives. This means we have several locations where treaties are being negotiated and signed.”
Source: The Nation
