Victor EzejaCHAIRMAN, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Muhammad Nami, has said that only 41 million people pay tax in Nigeria.
Going by the country’s population of 200 million, it means that only 20.5 percent of the people pay tax.
Nami, who stated this on Friday during Public Presentation and Breakdown of the 2022 Budget, expressed concern over poor tax drive in the country.
He stated that despite the 41 million taxpayers in Nigeria, the country still earned lower than most African nations on Personal Income Tax (PIT).
Comparing Nigeria with some other countries in terms of tax payment, the FIRS boss said, “If you also compare that with South Africa where they have a total population of about 60 million people, with just 4 million taxpayers, the total PIT paid in South Africa last year was about N13 trillion. You can now see that these things are not adding up.
“The number of billionaires in Lagos alone is more than the number of billionaires in the whole of South Africa but yet what we generated as PIT in Lagos State was low.
“So if we don’t pay these taxes, there is no way the government will be able to provide the social amenities and critical infrastructure required for the wellbeing of the country,” Nami stated.
He decried the attitude of the people who according to him are not willing to pay, adding that even those who are made tax collection agents find it difficult to remit what they have collected.
“We assume that we are a rich country, I don’t think that is correct. We only have the potential to be rich, because we have a very huge population of about 200 million.
“If you look at it from the rate of taxes paid in Saudi Arabia with a population of 10 million people, the VAT rate is as high as 15 percent and what we have in Nigeria is just 7.5 percent.
Victor Ezeja is a passionate journalist with six years of experience writing on economy, politics and energy. He holds a Masters degree in Mass Communication.
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