The Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Muhammad Nami, has said Nigeria earns lower than what its counterparts across Africa generate from Personal Income Taxes.
Nami added that only 41 million pay taxes in Nigeria out of the over 200 million population in the country.
The FIRS boss disclosed this at the ‘Public Presentation and Breakdown of the Highlights of the 2022 Appropriation Bill’ in Abuja on Friday.
He added that in spite of the 41 million taxpayers in the country, Nigeria still earned lower than what its counterparts across Africa generate from PIT.
According to him, South Africa with a population of about 60 million people and just four million taxpayers generated about N13 trillion from PIT in 2020.
He said, “You can now see that these things are not adding up. The number of billionaires in Lagos alone is more than the number of billionaires in the whole of South Africa but yet what we generated as PIT by Lagos State was low.
“So if we don’t pay these taxes, there is no way the government will be able to provide the social amenities required, the critical infrastructure required for the wellbeing of the country.”
He said that the total collection up to Sept. 31 which has not been fully reconciled with the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Nigerian Customs is about N4.2tn out of which oil-related taxes accounted for only 22 per cent which is N950bn; the non-oil taxes generated within that period was N3.3tn.
He said, “People are not willing to pay tax; even when they are appointed as agents of collection, whatever they have collected they find it difficult to remit.
“We assume that we are a rich country. I don’t think that is correct. We only have the potential to be rich, because we have a very huge population of about 200 million.
“If you look at it from the rate of taxes paid in Saudi Arabia with a population of 10 million people, the VAT rate is as high as 15 per cent and what we have in Nigeria is just 7.5 per cent.”
He also said that Nigeria, an oil-producing country, could not be compared to a small country like Saudi Arabia, saying “we are still not there.”
The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, urged citizens to always pay their taxes.
She said, “The money from taxes will go a long way, by providing social amenities, among others.”