FG to reduce number of taxes from 62 to less than 10

The Nigerian federal government, via the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, has revealed its intentions to reduce the number of taxes from about 62 to less than 10 in the country.

Taiwo Oyedele, chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, made these remarks in Abuja on Tuesday at the 53rd annual conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria.

Oyedele reported that a staggering 62 taxes are officially gathered across various government tiers in the nation. He stated this imposed a heavy burden on Nigerian business operators.

He also decried the several informal taxes being collected across the country, “At the federal level. The list is somewhere close to 16 officially at the state level 25 Local Government 21 But this is just the beginning of the story. The story is incomplete.

Until you add the over 108 informal taxes collected all over the place, sometimes by non-state actors that have been empowered, either passively or actively by the government.

“In fact, we have bicycle tax, and wheelbarrow tax in Nigeria. I think if you’re looking for the definition of wickedness, it will be to find a man who is struggling to make ends meet pushing their wheelbarrow in the sun and say, you have not paid your tax.

“What I want and hope to achieve is the reduction of the number of taxes to less than 10, yes, we want a single digit, and we want to cut down revenue collection agencies to one for each tier of government.

With this, the federal government has one revenue collection agency, the same for state and local governments. So that they can focus on their primary mandate of making life easier for citizens,” he said.