Fiscal Policy Partner and Africa Tax Leader at PwC, Taiwo Oyedele, has said Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government do not remit withholding tax to government.
Oyedele, who disclosed this at the Nairametrics Economic Outlook webinar, said, “You will be surprised to know that the National Assembly, presidency and EFCC do not remit taxes according to the audit report of the auditor general.”
The tax expert, who chided government for taxing poverty in Nigeria, urged that MDAs must remit taxes on staff and that the federal government must harmonise taxes by reducing the taxing agencies which should work in tandem with blocking leakages.
He advised government to explore an inclusive economic growth rate that would focus on taxes, reduce the economic burden on SMEs and increase the tax net of non-paying upper middle-class institutions, especially MDAs.
Oyedele further said, “What we need to do is make the country work for everyone. Almost 100 million people are living in poverty,” urging that government welfare policies needed to have more impact as sharing N5,000 to the poorest won’t go far.
He said government was basically taxing poverty at current rates, warning that if the poverty threshold was $2.15 and the average size of a household was five people, “it means we are taxing poverty when people can’t feed.
“If you tax people earning N70,000 or less you are taxing poverty. The top one per cent make up more than half of government revenue, so government policy should focus on the middle and upper classes and not on poor people.”
Oyedele also urged that other means for increasing government revenue was to be more efficient with tax collation for the upper class, citing that tax funds couldn’t come from the poorest, as the top five per cent of a population was usually responsible for most taxes in developed countries.
He added that, “We need to harmonise taxes; We have unofficially over 200 taxes, with only 10 doing well.”
