Legal experts and tax practitioners have advocated the reform of Nigeria’s tax laws to address the current revenue challenges in the country.
They spoke at the opening of a two-day workshop on the Reform of the Capital Tax Gains Tax Act of 2004 organised by the Nigerian Law Reform Commission (NLRC) in Abuja.
Speaking at the forum, the immediate past Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), expressed support for the reform of tax laws in Nigeria to address the revenue challenges.
Malami said the workshop was timely and relevant “given the current critical challenges the nation is passing through as a result of over-dependence on oil revenue which has not been stable for some time now.”
Also speaking, the chairman of the NLRC, Professor Jummai Audi, said the initiative was brought under the mandate of the commission in Section 5(1) of the NLRC Act No 7, 2022, to consult, engage and elicit the views of the distinguished resource persons and participants on the proposals for reform of the Act.
Experts bemoaned Nigeria’s adoption of foreign models and its inability to define its tax characteristics based on its history.
Some of the identified gaps in the Act include the broad and wide exemptions in the Act which provide opportunities for tax avoidance; the low percentage of tax chargeable on gains considering the large profits made from areas such as real estate; and failure to compute the gain between capital gains and the personal income tax.
