Tax reform bills get NESG’s seal of approval

The Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) has endorsed the contentious tax reforms bills, which have successfully passed the second hearing, demonstrating its support for the government’s efforts to overhaul the country’s tax system.

Tayo Aduloju, chief executive officer, NESG, announced his support in an interactive session with journalist in Abuja on Friday.

According to him, the bill seeks to allocate the tax burden to those that are benefiting the most from the economic system such as the top earners and profitable enterprises.

The bill, he explained, aims to redistribute the tax burden, targeting high-income individuals and profitable businesses that reap the most benefits from the economy.

“One is right tax, which was the President’s first instruction to us -tax the harvest, not the seed. The second was this idea that if you already have the working poor, taxing the working poor does not solve any problems.

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In fact, we are better off not giving social investments to anybody, right, and not taxing the working poor. Because at least what they get, they keep for themselves.

“When you say you are doing social investment, they don’t get it. So, for us, it was a way to say, build a better system. The bills seek to build a better social security system because it identifies those whose income falls already into working poor and exempts them.It identifies businesses that the system already has made vulnerable and exempts them.

“And I think if the bill doesn’t win on anything, you know, Nigerians will support the fact that here, for the first time, is a set of bills that win on the fundamental socioeconomic adjustments required for proper transitions to a taxable level of economic strata, I think that’s important,” he said.