Taxation: Don urges FG to focus on wealthy entrepreneurs to fund budgets
NAN-HE- 19
Budget
By Nwaogu Uchechi/ Cecilia Ologunagba
Abuja, Aug. 14, 2017 (NAN) Prof. Abiola Sanni of the University of Lagos has advised the Federal Government to focus on wealthiest business men and professionals in tax collection to fund the country’s budgets.
Sanni, a professor of Commercial Law and Taxation, gave the advice at the 138th meeting of the Joint Tax Board (JTB) on Monday in Abuja.
He spoke on a paper titled “Administering Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS): The role of stakeholders’’.
The don said that government should leverage on the stupendous wealth of some people to generate revenue to boost the economy.
“For example, if we look at the riches of 5,000 Nigerians, we will generate bogus amount of money that may even finance the budget.’’
The don, however, commended the Federal Government for introducing VAIDS.
The VAIDS scheme introduced on July 1, aims at reducing tax payers’ liability and creating more awareness on the statutory function of every working citizen to pay tax.
The scheme offers a window to those who, before now, have not complied with existing tax regulations to remedy their positions by the provision of limited amnesty to enable voluntary declaration and payment of liabilities.
Sanni urged the states to domesticate and take ownership of VAIDS to ensure it’s effectively implementation.
In addition, he urged the Federal Government to simplify tax system for sustainability.
“ If we must revamp the tax system, we must think in view of fewer taxes that will produce much more than the litany of taxes stipulated in the Tax Act.’’
Commenting on the Executive Order by the Acting President on VAIDS, he commended the Federal Government for taking such bold step to improve on revenue generation.
“We need to go to the National Assembly to fine-tune it later.
“In the National Tax Policy Document 2017, the recommendation is that we should have one national day, dedicated to taxation but now is one day per week.
“This is multiplying the outcome 54 times and if we do something about this, tax education will become cheap in the course of time.’’
According to him, the government needs to document experiences of strengths and weaknesses in the planning, execution and future of tax amnesty programme.
Meanwhile, Mr Oseni Elamah, the new Executive Secretary of the Joint Tax Board (JTB), said the implementation of VAIDS would be done in collaboration with all the tax authorities.
Elamah said the stakeholders had discussed innovations, which already had provisions in the various tax laws.
On generating revenue through VAIDS, he said the first step was to have a clear mode of identifying tax payers.
“The JTB did the Tax Identification Number project and over time some of the tax authorities have created their own identification numbers, which led to having series of identification database.
He said during the last two meetings of the JTB, it was resolved that the identification database should be duplicated in collaboration with National Identification Management Commission (NIIMC).
He also said that the database should be duplicated with NIIMC and CBN, to have accurate figures of tax payers. (NAN)
NUP/CIA/DO/IA
Edited by Idris Abdulrahman