The Chairman, Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Taiwo Oyedele, has emphasised the importance of tax reform to the economy, noting that it is more important than the famous statement “subsidy is gone” made by President Bola Tinubu at his inauguration.
Oyedele stated Thursday, in Lagos, during a stakeholders engagement with the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) with the theme, “From Legislative Assembly to Factory Floor: What the New Tax Laws Mean for Nigerian Manufacturers”.

His words: “Everybody remembers that on Day one, May 29 2023, the president said when he was doing his inaugural speech that “subsidy is gone”. Everybody remembers that.

“In that same speech, he said, we must tackle the problem of multiplicity of taxation.“Many people may not remember that, but it’s even more important than the “subsidy is gone” statement.

It was in that spirit that the president set up the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms Committee.”

Oyedele further stated: “We were taxing investments. We have one of the highest tax burdens on corporate profit of businesses in the world, here in Nigeria.

“In fact, in Nigeria, ironically, the manufacturing sector carries even disproportionately higher effective tax rates than other sectors, when manufacturers, like other people, move things around, in terms of logistics inputs as well as outputs.

“They have to deal with multiplicity of taxes everywhere they turn, both legal and illegal, from state actors and non state actors. Even legal taxes were being collected illegally.
So this was not working for us, and it wasn’t going to work.

“The system is broken also because we tax poverty. Our lowest income earners were paying taxes, sometimes more diligently than the high income earners.

“When the tax amnesty that we call VAID was introduced in 2017, the Vice President at the time was acting as the president, and he said that about 96% of the income tax that is paid in Nigeria was coming from low income earners.
“We needed to do something about it as a country.”

In his vote of thanks, Director General of MAN, Segun Ajayi-Kadir, said the interest of manufacturers were well represented in the making of the tax laws
“Manufacturers should try to get the maximum advantage from the new tax laws,” he added.