Despite the encouragement of the government that Nigerians should pay their taxes, it appears Nigerians are not doing so.
The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, said in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in New York that Nigeria was among the lowest tax-paying countries in the world.
It is reported that the Federal Government is committed to doubling Nigeria’s tax to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio from its current 6% to 12% by the year 2020.
Adeosun said: “We’ve made it the focus to improve our tax to GDP ratio from 6% where it currently is to move it up into a spare for other African countries.
“Ghana has 15%, South Africa has 24%. Most developed countries have 30%. So Nigeria’s 6% is very low. We shared some of our challenges with the panel and we got some very good advice and support which would be taken back to Nigeria to implement.”
She said, however, that there was still a long way to go adding, “we are not satisfied yet until that figure is significantly moved from where we are in today”.
“As I said, we’ve set ourselves a target, we want to pursue that aggressively and all the revenue generating agencies especially FIRS – Federal Inland Revenue Service. States Internal Revenue Service is being equipped to really take on that task and we expect that to yield a result.”
The minister had also held a private meeting with the Head of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Global Forum on Exchange of Information.
The meeting focused on Nigeria’s efforts for developing international networks and collaboration with other countries to secure taxpayer information.
Source: Pulse.ng
