June 3, 2019

The Federal Government says it will grant tax incentives to private companies willing to fund the construction of major road projects in the six geo-political zones of the country. The Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed said this on Tuesday at the Public Presentation of the Approved 2019 Budget in Abuja. Ahmed, who spoke on some of the government’s Public Private Partnership initiatives, said any company who funds road construction will get tax credit or reduction equal to the amount invested in the projects. “The current government has undertaken several initiatives to partner with the public. “One of them is the Road Infrastructure Tax Credit Scheme, where if any private sector build any road with their own resources, they can recover the investment made through tax credit. “Also, the federal government is automating the process of acquiring waivers or import duties. Right now, the process is extremely cumbersome and has proven to be a drain on our resources. “We have just advanced process for the project and we believe that once it’s automated, the process will be more transparent and efficient,’’ she said. Ahmed also said that the Federal Government had introduced the Strategic Revenue Growth Initiative for sustainable revenue generation in all sectors of the economy. She said the initiative also seeks to improve monitoring collections by all revenue generation agencies. Meanwhile, the 2019 Budget Breakdown shows that the Ministry of Interior has the highest recurrent allocation of N564.22 billion, which covers salaries, overheads and other running costs in the Ministry. President Muhammadu Buhari had on Monday signed the 2019 appropriation bill into law, signaling beginning of the implementation of the 2019 fiscal calendar. The Statutory Transfer stood at N502 billion, Fiscal Deficit, N1.92 trillion, Special Intervention N500 billion, Recurrent Expenditure N4.07 trillion, Capital Expenditure, N2.09 trillion and Deficit to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 1.37 per cent. The non-oil revenue is estimated at N3.31 trillion while the oil revenue is estimated at N3.69 trillion. (NAN)   Source: Daily trust

CASH-STRAPPED councils should consider clobbering Brits with a local income tax to plug their multi-billion pound funding black hole, a respected think-tank today says. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said English town halls have had their funding slashed by a fifth in the past decade. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says local councils will face a funding gap of £2billion a year for social adult care by 2025. Council bosses have lopped 50 per cent of their housing and culture budgets as they scramble to slash costs. But they face a fresh crisis and a funding gap of £2billion a year for adult social care alone by 2025, the IFS said. The think-tank said ministers must consider handing councils new powers to levy their own, local income tax to stave off the crisis. IFS researcher David Phillips told The Sun: “Ministers can give councils a slice of the income tax they raise, then the central government would have to find new ways of raising revenue to make up the difference, like increasing National Insurance Contributions. “Or they can give councils the power to levy their own income tax.” He said different councils could set the tax at different rates, and offer different services. Some town halls could decide to set it low and offer no-thrills basic services to their residents like the airline easy jet. He said: “You could get so-called easy councils, which could set the tax rate low and offer only basic services.  “And you could get some councils that decide to set higher taxes so they can deliver more services.” But this could create a postcode lottery for services, he warned. The IFS said ministers face a big choice. Either they must give the green light to hiking taxes so councils get the cash they need. Or Brits must accept their councils will massively scale back what they do.   Source: The Sun

The Niger Delta Budget Monitoring Group and Oxfam International have urged the federal and state governments to intensify efforts in the collection of taxes from citizens. During a multi-stakeholder dialogue in Lagos, the Program me Officer, Public-Private Sector Transparency and Accountability Officer, Oxfam International, Henry Ushie, said that the government, both at the federal and state levels, had been soft on wealthy people in the society. In a statement, he said, “In retrieving taxes, I think the government has been soft on the rich but that is not the same with the poor. These rich people, including the multinationals, always find a way within the law to evade tax. “Our system also allows these big companies to operate for some years without paying a dime. It will not be wrong to say the government has not been proactive on tax collection.” While noting that the government had yet to explore all the avenues to retrieve taxes, he stated, “We have only explored 20 per cent of those who are taxable, which means 80 per cent is still untaxed. We should be able to bring these people into the tax net.” Ushie argued that if a person spoke with the Lagos State Internal Revenue Service or Federal Internal Revenue Service, it might say it did not have the manpower to go after people who evaded taxes. “But if we can harmonize our scattered database systems, we can track everyone who is taxable through their Bank Verification Number or other means,” he added. The Chief Executive Officer, NDEBUMOG, George Anthony, stated that it was the civic responsibility of every citizen to pay tax, regardless of how terrible a government could be. He explained, “Paying tax is the responsibility of every responsible citizen but people don’t have an interest in it due to the poor social amenities and the state of the economy. However, when you pay your tax, you have the moral right to demand effective service and accountability from the government.”   Source: Punch