Senator representing Ondo South Senatorial district, Jimoh Ibrahim has said rich Nigerians should be made to pay taxes.
He said the government should begin to tax luxury.
According to him, it’s a global practice that when an
economic crisis hits a nation, the government directs its policies towards
making the rich citizens pay heavy taxes for the nation to come out of its
economic quagmire.
Senator Ibrahim stated this on Tuesday while briefing Senate
Press Corps after plenary on Tuesday.
He gave clarification on his intervention at plenary on the
consideration of the report of the joint committees on Finance and National
Planning and Economic Affairs on the 2025-2027 Medium Term Expenditure
Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP).
He said it would be the first time that the nation would tax
net worth citizens, adding that adequate taxing of economic net worth Nigerians
was a means of shoring up the nation’s revenue base.
“My worry is that the rich in Nigeria are not paying enough
taxes in order to be a good jolly fellow with the poor.
“In other countries, taxes are paid on transactions. The
rich need to pay more taxes and one of the areas where our economic gap can be
covered is when we address those lacuna.
“Luxury taxes should be monitored and collected. We should
look at a law that will police transactional tax on the rich,” he said.
To make this effective, he said “there should be an adequate
data bank of the taxable rich”.
“GDP to tax ratio in Nigeria is 18 percent, while the test
72 percent are not taxed.
“It is unfortunate economically that 72 percent of the
Nigerian population are not in the tax net,” he added.
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