SARAKI INAUGURATES TECHNICAL COMMITTEE ON TAX REFORMS

“For a country like ours that wants to grow, we must adopt a more efficient and productive tax system. It is not just to increase revenue alone, I think it is also to address how efficient and the level of harmonization of taxes across board, particularly as we operate a three tier system of government’.

“One of the difficulties or frustration you find, from business people is where they have to pay similar taxes at the local, state and federal levels. There is a lot of duplication even from State to State. You see people moving goods from Sokoto State to Lagos and by the time they do that, they are made to pay similar taxes along the way at various inter-State and local government checkpoints’, the statement said.

“This at the long run makes business unproductive. I hope that at the end of the day you should have an approach that will bring in a system that is efficient, a system that reduces all these barricades and the different challenges on the ease of doing business,” Saraki added.

He called for the expansion of the technical committee to include major players in the private sector “as it is better to engage and get their input rather than giving them directives during the implementation of the expected reforms.”

The Senate President called on the committee to come up with an approach that would harmonize the tax process among the three levels of government, adding “It should also be an approach that is transparent, consistent and stable. People must be very clear on what they should pay. I want to use this opportunity to appeal to the private sector to get involved.

“This is an opportunity for us to really redesign the tax system of our country and I think there are a lot of experts in the private sector because at the end of the day they are the ones that the law is going to affect’. We need to engage them rather than just giving them directives. I think there is need for the committee to expand its membership to include stakeholders from the private sector,” he stated.

The leader of the Technical Committee and Director General of the National Institute of Legislative Studies (NILS), Professor Ladi Hamalai, earlier in his speech  thanked the Senate President for the initiative aimed at reforming the nation’s tax system.

“The expected report and pieces of legislation from the work of this Technical Committee will not only harmonize the various disparate legislations, it would also facilitate the ease of paying taxes in the country and at the same time, impact on the overall ease of doing business,” Hamalai said.

Penpushing report that, members of the committee include representatives of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA) and State Commissioners of Finance, among others.