Revenue: Tax Reform Bills to Harmonise Scattered Laws say FIRS Chairman
By Oluwakemi Kindness
The Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, Zack Adedeji, on Wednesday told the House of Representatives that the tax reform bills aims to harmonise all the tax laws in Nigeria.
Speaking before the House Committee on Finance, he said the four tax reform bills recently presented by the President to the National Assembly is not aimed at increasing tax or introducing new taxes into the nation’s tax books.
Adedeji told the James Faleke led Committee that the bills is also not aimed at merging any government agency and that it will not lead to any loss of jobs.
He said “We want to harmonise all the tax laws because we have tax laws scatteted in different tax laws and different establishment laws passed. The implications of that is the multiplicity of taxes that people talk about because each agency that has tax law must implement that tax law.
“No agency is superior to the other and you cannot ask one agency not to carry out the order. So, Mr. President saw that this is not good for the economy and the only way to do that is to harmonise all the tax laws and have them in one place.
“The other reason is to organise the fiscal framework in the country. As we stand today, there is no law anywhere to actually regulate or monitor Cyrotocurrency. We are in a global community and there is no way we can exclude ourselves from what is happening globally. So, I be of the hills is to organise the fiscal efficiency in the fiscal framework.
“Another this is to synergies all revenue collecting agencies. One of the things we also consider is efficiency in government spending. For example, prior to the implementation of TSA, government will have money in one bank and be borrowing from another because we don’t have the holistic view.
“But when TSA was implemented, it gave us a holistic view of where government monies are. With that, you will not have money on one bank and be borrowing from another.
The FIRS boss further noted that another principle is to improve the transparency and integrity of revenue collection.
For the Chairman of the House Committee on Finance, James Faleke he said the aim of the meeting is to give members a first hand information on the necessity of the bills so that they can make informed contribution when the bills comes up for second reading.
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