FG set to tax wealthy Nigerians to achieve revenue target

The Federal Government has revealed its plan to overhaul the nation’s tax system to shift more of the burden to wealthy citizens to achieve its 18% Tax-GDP ration revenue target.

This was disclosed was by Mr. Taiwo Oyedele, Chairman, of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms in a recent interview with Bloomberg.

Mr. Taiwo noted that this move is part of President Bola Tinubu’s reforms as the Federal Government aims to achieve an 18% Tax-to-GDP ratio within 3 years.
According to him, the plan is to: “Make the rich pay what is fair and those who are too poor can be protected. We also envisage a reduction in the corporate income tax rate to below the current effective rate of more than 40% to help boost business.”

Mr. Taiwo went further to highlight how the committee aims to leverage technology to widen the tax net and boost revenue. He said, “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.

The goal is to slash the number of taxes down to single digits. We just identified the top eight giving us 99% of the taxes, so we keep them and the rest we get rid of. 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.”