Tax: FG targets double revenues within three years
The Federal Government yesterday launched an ambitious tax drive aimed at doubling revenue over the next three years.
The ways and means of the revenue generation initiative will be worked out by a panel constituted by President Bola Tinubu.
Heading the panel is Taiwo Oyedele, fiscal policy partner and Africa tax leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
Oyedele, who was recently quoted as saying the federal government could generate N20 trillion revenue annually “if it is not lazy” will be assisted by experts from both the private and public sectors, Special Adviser to the President on Special Duties, Communications and Strategy, Dele Alake, said in a statement.
According to Alake, the panel will “enhance revenue collection efficiency, ensure transparent reporting and promote the effective utilization of tax and other revenues.”
The objective, he said, was to transform the tax system to support sustainable development and achieve a minimum tax to gross domestic product ratio of 18% within the next three years.
Nigeria’s Tax-to-GDP ratio in the last 12 years has hovered between 5 per cent and 6 per cent and rose to 10.86 per cent by the end of 2021.
“In addition to his role at PwC, Oyedele holds several important positions in prestigious organisations.
“He is the Thematic Lead for the Fiscal Policy & Planning Commission and serves as the Chairman of the West Africa Debt Management Roundtable of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG).
“Furthermore, he chairs the Taxation & Fiscal Policy Faculty Board of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and is a member of the Nigerian Taxation Standards Board.
“He also serves as a member of the Ministerial Committee on the implementation of Nigeria’s National Tax Policy.
“He is a member of the Global Tax Forum and has previously served as a member of the Global Governing Council of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA).
“As an educator, Oyedele holds the position of Associate Professor at the Babcock University Business School.
“He is an alumnus of the London School of Economics & Political Science, Yale University and Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education. He is a guest lecturer at the Lagos Business School and the Founder and President of Impact Africa Foundation.”
The Economist hails Tinubu’s “impressive first moves”
The influential international magazine, The Economist, in its latest edition brands Tinubu’s early moves as impressive.
The President, it says, “delighted reform-minded Nigerians by veering off-script to announce an end to subsidising petroleum products, which for decades has drained the treasury of revenues from the country’s most valuable natural resource.”
Continuing, it says Tinubu has not ceased to “shake the establishment with a string of night-time press statements which heralded the firing of his central bank governor, the top brass of the army and the heads of several key government agencies, including the police, the customs service and the financial crimes commission.”
To the magazine, Tinubu’s “biggest scalp” was that of Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele who was suspended on June 9 for what the president himself called the rotten financial system brought about by the CBN under Emefiele.
It adds: “Mr Tinubu’s speedy appointments on the security side are intended to help curb terrorism in the country’s northeast and the scourge of kidnapping in the northwest, as well as violence elsewhere. sbm, an intelligence outfit based in Lagos, the commercial capital, estimates that between July 2021 and June 2022, 3,420 people, including hundreds of schoolchildren, were kidnapped.
“Nigerians are hoping for livelier yet safer leadership under their new man.
