FG urged to tax more Nigerians to fund budget

BudgIT, a non-government organisation that specializes in analyzing federal, state and local government budgets is urging the Federal Government to tax more Nigerians across the country so that it can generate enough revenue to fund the N6tn 2016 Appropriation Bill.

Speaking at a workshop on budget analysis in Abuja on Tuesday, the Team Lead and Co-founder of BudgIT, Mr. Oluseun Onigbinde said, ''Every loophole that government finds with respect to those not paying taxes should be blocked. For the question is how does government gets to fund its budget when people don’t pay taxes and the price of crude oil, our major revenue source, is falling drastically? The government needs to drive efficiency and it should start with the revenue-generating agencies, particularly the FIRS (Federal Inland Revenue Service). It needs to also make sure that every Nigerian has an identity, for how do you capture or collect taxes without identifying the citizens of your country? They need to make everybody have a tax or an identity number. After we have all that, then we can now start to talk about borrowing money. So, it is possible to generate enough revenue to fund the budget from taxation. Of course, it is not something that can be done overnight. But there has to be an existing structure. We need to get the progressive structures in place because tax ensures income distribution mechanism.''

According to him, the American economy depends more on its revenue from taxes, stressing that Nigeria could adopt the same model.