Chairman of the presidential committee on fiscal policy and tax reforms, Taiwo Oyedele, on Sunday said no government agency has been stopped from collecting statutory revenue, noting his team was been mandated to harmonise tax collection.
Oyedele, a former fiscal policy partner and Africa tax leader at PriceWaterhouseCoopers(PwC) also said the federal government did not intend to introduce new taxes.
The fiscal policy expert spoke through a lengthy post on X, addressing some frequently asked questions about the committee.
Oyedele said many of the agencies would rather focus on their primary functions, hence, the committee planned to harmonise revenue collection.
He said: “No agency has been stopped from collecting revenue as many of them are empowered to do so by law.
”However, many of the agencies would rather focus on their primary functions, hence we intend to harmonise the fragmented revenue collection functions into one agency for each government.
“This is the case in many countries, including the leading tax regimes in Africa. This reform will help improve efficiency and enable the agencies to focus on their primary mandates for the overall benefit of the economy.”
He clarified that the committee did not intend to introduce new taxes, also, didn’t want to impose higher tax rates.
“Rather, our mandate is to reduce the number of taxes and levies while harmonising revenue collection to reduce the burden on the people and businesses.
“The objective is to avoid taxing investment, capital, production or poverty. We plan to review and re-enact the major tax laws in a holistic manner thereby limiting the necessity for frequent changes through annual finance acts,” he said
On how the committee planned to achieve a tax-to-gross domestic product ratio of 18 per cent in three years, Oyedele said the average tax-to-GDP ratio for Africa, excluding Nigeria, was about 18 per cent.
“This is the basis for the target of 18 per cent and the estimated tax gap of N20 trillion. There is a huge opportunity to generate revenue by leveraging technology and tax intelligence to close the gap.