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The Chairman of the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms Committee, Taiwo Oyedele, has said that those opposing the tax reforms made money for years without paying taxes.
Oyedele made the comment when he spoke at the January business breakfast of the Franco-Nigerian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) held recently in Lagos.
Addressing resistance to ongoing tax reforms and the country’s weak revenue performance, he compared Nigeria to South Africa, adding that the country generated over N60 trillion (naira equivalent) from personal income tax alone in 2024.
Oyedele disclosed that the above amount exceeds Nigeria’s total tax revenue from all sources combined, including petroleum profit tax, corporate income tax, value-added tax (VAT), and taxes collected by federal, state and local governments.
“That is one tax from about 60 million people, compared to Nigeria’s 240 million people.
“If you take the top 60 million people in Nigeria based on income, it will be comparable to the per capita income of South Africa.
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“Let’s say we can’t collect 60 trillion, why not 30? Guess how much we collected? It was under N3 trillion. Something is wrong; the math is not adding up,” he said.
According to Oyedele, the sharp disparity explains why tax reforms continue to face a lot of pushback from certain quarters.
“This is one of the reasons why we find the motivation to keep going, because the people fighting the reforms are not telling you why they’re fighting them. It is because they made money for so long, they never paid taxes.
“We are designing a system that says nobody will be above the law anymore.
“You will fight it because it is hard to pay tax anywhere in the world, we understand that, but we will not compromise the future of the country because what is at stake is much bigger than any of us.”
