81% of Nigerians do not pay taxes ― NGF

THE Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) has observed that 81 per cent of taxable adults and businesses in Nigeria do not pay their income taxes due to low tax morale in the country.

According to a statement issued in Abuja on Wednesday by the forum’s spokesman, Abdulrazaque Bello-Barkindo, this was disclosed in a presentation made by Research Director of the Fiscal Policy Roundtable of the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG), Mr Tayo Oyedele at the NGF in Abuja.

The statement informed that Oyedele, who was in the company of the Chairman of the Fiscal Policy Roundtable (FPR), Dr Sarah Alade had paid a courtesy call on the Director-General of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Mr Asishana Bayo Okauru, to solicit an opportunity to expose this sour narrative to the nation’s governors and seek their involvement to correct the ills that are denying the country of its collectible revenues.

It said Oyedele, who condemned the seeming national apathy of Nigerians on payment of taxes, said that figures available to him revealed that there are 20 million registered taxpayers in the country, scoffing at the figure which seems paltry compared to the presumed nation’s population of nearly 200 million people.

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While explaining the concept and reasons adduced to the nation’s low tax morale, the NESG Director disclosed, however, that nearly 85% of those who deem it unnecessary to pay taxes to the government willingly pay same to “non-government actors.”

This ironic twist, the NESG attributed to the distrust that pervades the environment when it comes to paying taxes, dues and levies to a government that does not command the public’ trust.

Of the tiers of government on whose shoulders tax collection is reposed, the research showed that Local Governments and their officials are among the most untrustworthy, followed by state governments and then the tax officials themselves.

The statement further quoted him as saying: “Many believe that it is unwise to pay taxes to entities that do not translate taxes to services or to officials who diverted same to personal use.”

Oyedele insisted that there is nonetheless 17% of the population who see the payment of taxes as a civic duty which all must perform.

Maintaining that there were 354 taxes in Nigeria, which create duplicity of taxes and favouritism on where to audit and where not to audit, not minding the unprofessional conduct of tax collectors, who sometimes threaten the public, NESG also regretted that the penalties for non-payment of taxes in Nigeria were not only unhurtful and not punitive enough, but that the processes of penalizing reluctant taxpayers were selective.

The NESG, therefore, recommended that it would have been better if the country minimised the tax regimes of the country from 354 to only 10, abrogating such meaningless taxes as the ozone layer tax which the population can hardly fathom.

According to the research, as narrated by the NESG, personal income taxpayers would have been happier to pay their taxes if education, health and infrastructural provision were raised to global standards, while corporate taxpayers would love to see electricity, roads and security improved.

In his remark, the Director-General of the NGF warned that the situation is a looming calamity which must be addressed urgently.