The Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Mr. Taiwo Oyedele, clarified on Monday that the proposed 2024 Nigeria Tax Bill before the National Assembly is not designed to undermine any region.
Speaking during an interactive session in Abuja organized by the House of Representatives, Oyedele highlighted pressing socioeconomic issues, including 33.88% inflation, high unemployment rates, over 95 million citizens in monetary poverty, and 133 million experiencing multidimensional poverty.
The reforms aim to address these critical challenges while ensuring equitable taxation policies.
He explained that the present administration seeks to “do away with nuisance taxes with very low revenue yield, high cost of collection and ultimate burden on the poor and small businesses; focus on high revenue-yielding taxes that are broad-based and relatively easy to collect; Merge taxes and levies that are imposed on the same or substantially similar tax base; keep the total number of taxes across all levels of government to a single digit, as well as Institutionalise the tax harmonization reform to ensure sustainability.
In his presentation, Mr Oyedele, who maintained that “There is no negative thinking about any region or anything,” disclosed that the administration proposed zero percent VAT on food, education, and healthcare. Exempt rent, transport, etc; increase rate on non-essential items to partly offset reduction on essential items, as well as discontinue other consumption taxes and charge only VAT where applicable, while all businesses will be able to recover VAT on their assets and services thereby lowering their overall costs and reducing inflation.
He argued that the proposed reform would only ensure efficiency and give more revenue to states where goods and services are consumed, while over 97 percent of SMEs will be exempted from charging VAT on their sales.