The Senate has called for the scrapping of the tax waivers being granted by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) through which the country has lost N17 trillion within the past five years.
The decision which was passed down by the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Sani Musa on Monday, is the second time the upper chamber would be complaining about the tax waivers which were also opposed during the tenure of the former finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
The Senate which had earlier objected to the tax waivers during the 2024 budget presentation of FIRS to its committee on Finance, stated that the tax waivers are being largely abused and urged the FIRS to substitute them with a rebating system.
The Chairman, Senator Musa (APC Niger East), stated,” Your projection of N19 trillion as total tax collection for 2024 is good when compared to N11.16 trillion achieved in 2023 but the senate believes that you can do up to 30 trillion if required measures are put in place.
“As impressive and encouraging the performance and projections of FIRS are, under your leadership, this committee and by extension, the Senate, on a serious note, urge you to look at the direction of tax waivers largely being abused with attendant and avoidable losses being incurred yearly.
On controversy concerning the implementation of the Tax Credit Scheme for road construction by CBN, the FIRS boss, Zach Adedeji who appeared before the senate insisted that the N2.5 trillion earlier committed to it, must be fully implemented before thinking of any fresh one.
“Regarding tax credit, what I said was that the programme is laudable but that the N2.5 trillion being spent on it by NNPCL should be exhausted before bringing fresh requests. The N2.7 trillion fresh requests being made, should not be entertained because all NNPC revenue should not be spent on roads when the Ministry of Works is there”.
Adedeji said the FIRS projected N19.4 trillion as the targeted total tax collection for 2024 and insisted that the fresh N2.7 trillion Tax Credit planned for road construction in the country should be stopped.
The FIRS Chairman in his presentation, informed the committee that to save Nigerians from multiple taxation, FIRS in collaboration with the committee set up by President Bola Tinubu, would reduce the 62 different taxes to eight.
“President Bola Tinubu has seen the issue of multiple taxation as a pool of problems that is why he set up the presidential committee on tax reforms and fiscal policy. As of today in Nigeria, we have 62 types of taxes being collected and the sad news is that less than eight out of the entire 62, accounted for 97 per cent of the collection.
“We are already consulting and engaging the state government on it and at the end of the day, we won’t have more than eight or nine taxes that the state and federal government would be collecting”, he said.
Comments are closed.