There must be limit to taxation —NLC faults Finance Act

The Nigeria Labour Congress has faulted the Finance Act over its focus and emphasis on taxation.

President of NLC, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, who spoke with Nigerian Tribune, said there must be a limit to taxation; and warned that the government cannot continue to squeeze the poor and think that things will go rightly.

According to Wabba, the Finance Act is a good document, adding that the issue of taxation in the Act is the only problem.

The NLC President said: “It is a normal process; people just don’t understand. In other climes, when you have a budget you must also pass through a legislation on how to implement it but year in, year out, we just do budget; sometimes the budget will be 20 per cent or 40 per cent implementation. It is a process that many countries have been doing, it is not something that is new.

“The only thing that is new is the issue of taxation, there must be a limit to taxation. In other climes, taxation is a way to fund the budget, but in many climes you tax the rich to subsidize the poor. But in our own country it is a uniform process which is actually the problem because you cannot squeeze and continue to squeeze the poor and think that things will go rightly.

“That is the only problem, if not, the Finance Act is a good document, but the way it is supposed to be done is that the rich should be able to subsidise for the poor.”

Wabba added: “The poor already are paying, for instance the case of a worker, he pays his tax as and when due, we call it Pay As You Earn. Before you’re even paid, the tax is deducted but many of our elite don’t pay tax. They have many luxury properties but they don’t pay tax on them. Those are the things we are supposed to focus on but not to continue to focus on the generality of Nigerians of which 70 per cent are living below the poverty line.

“It is like squeezing nothing from nothing, it is like robbing Paul to pay Peter. It is like you are robbing me to pay me, which is not supposed to be the case. Clearly speaking, that is the contradiction, Nigeria is not a poor country, if you look at the report of NAITI, look at the report of the Auditor General of the Federation which is one area we have not focused on.”

He advised that instead of continue to squeezing the poor, the government should look at other avenue, saying, “our liquefied natural gas is the most lucrative venture in the whole of Africa, prosperous venture in the whole of Africa, how much are we generating from there? Nobody is speaking about that. With the financial bill signed by the president, it will be able to generate about an estimate of N1.5 billion in terms of real revenue.”

He, however, insisted that the taxes would be transferred to the poor masses. Wabba said: “Talking about the VAT now, Gencos and Discos want to transfer VAT to consumers, so it is going to affect we the poor and also affect the purchasing power of Nigerians. That is our argument, our argument is about doing the right thing but do the right thing in the right way.”