- I am not of the opinion that the “whole” Tax Bill should be withdrawn because to be honest, this tax bill reform is one of the major reforms in this country since Petroleum Industry Act (PIA, 2021), even more important to the country and economy than the Electricity and Finance Acts. If there are concerns, which is ordinary of any legislative piece, the concerns should be addressed specifically not the bill in totality. Senator Indume and everyone with concerns, should propagate, specifically, the concerns and propose solutions/substitute.
- The major concerns in the bill are the ones raised by the NEC and Northern Governors Forum (NGF). Though they did not clearly state the concerns but from body language, one can deduce that they are majorly about the “Derivation Formula”, “VAT Exemption” and the “Personal Income Tax”. I also reason with them on these 3 issues and the energy should just be channeled to addressing and proposing solutions or substitute to the issues not condemning the whole bill.
- The current derivation formula focuses on VAT Collection from Corporate Headquarters and that’s why Lagos, Rivers and Abuja account for 42%, 16% and 9% of the total VAT Collections due to concentration of the corporate HQ’s there. The proposed bill seeks to revise the VAT derivation formula to allocate revenue based on the location of goods and services consumption which is ordinarily the whole essence of VAT otherwise known as consumption tax.
But the big question is how will FIRS track the consumption? I will use practical assumption with Maggi being produced in Lagos.
In the current VAT regime, if 1,000 cartons is purchased by a distributor in Kano, VAT will automatically be deducted at source by the producer and remitted to FIRS by the producer on behalf of the “unknown” consumers wherever they are, whether in Kano, Katsina, Bayelsa, Abia, Delta Yobe or Sokoto.
But in current regime, the 1,000 cartons will be purchased without VAT which means the goods have to be tracked to the final consumption location to record for revenue allocation. Now if the Kano distributor sells 200 cartons to a sub-distributor in Jigawa and the sub-distributor also sells 20 cartons each to retailers in nearby towns under Katsina, Yobe or Bauchi States, how do we “accurately and fully” record that consumption for proper revenue allocation to the states?
- On VAT-exempted items especially Agric Produce, it’s left for the governors to improvise means to add value to their produce and make them taxable. I used to see it as an issue but to be honest, we should not base our laws on “negligence”.
Why will a business man load Live Animals from Dankama or Charanci Markets in Katsina to Lagos when he can process it, package it and transport in cold trucks to anywhere and still get VAT for value addition?. Why load bags of maize, millet or beans directly from farm or market in Giwa, Dandume when you can simply polish, sieve and package before transporting which will make it taxable due to value addition? The list goes on.
Our advocacy should be on encouraging our business owners to formalize and add value to their businesses in order to generate revenue rather than just “rejecting” the idea because of our own negligence.
- Personal Income Tax makes up a chunk of revenue share for states and the bill proposes 0% PIT for workers earning N1m and below. Majority of state and LG workers are under this category. This will result in massive reduction in revenue for states relying on PIT, majority of which are from North. This is good for workers but bad for states and I dont think we should reject welfare of people at the detriment of “laziness” of state governments for not diversifying their sources of income.
- Finally, I congratulate Mr. Taiwo Oyedele and his team for their wonderful work and I hope our relevant stakeholders in the North should address the “derivation” issue at public hearing.
God bless Nigeria 🇳🇬