- Safiu Kehinde
Opeyemi Agbaje, the founder of leading strategy and business advisory firm, RTC Advisory Services Ltd, has allayed concern over the tax reform policy set to be implemented in January, alleging that many of those criticising the policy are tax evaders.
Agbaje made this known during in an interview on Television Continental News (TVC) on Monday.
The finance expert held that the policy is aimed at easing burden on the poor as it exempted basic necessities and small business owners from being taxed.
He however maintained that the criticism of the policy is borne out of the tax evaders suspicion of a thorough enforcement of the policy once implemented.
“The person that has a problem is the person who has been evading taxes and want that to continue.
“Otherwise, what this tax has done is that they ease the burden of the poor. They lift up of the tension from company income tax and personal income tax.
“So, those who are marginalised vulnerable are exempted. It removes VAT from basic necessities including food and so on.
“I believe that many of those who are shouting is because they are not paying anything. They suspect that the enforcement of this new system is going to be more thorough.” Agbaje said.
He urged the tax evaders to comply with the new policy while highlighting the impact of taxation on governance and political participation.
“If you have not be paying, I have no succour to offer. I suggest that you should try and comply.
“If you have been paying and it is difficult, maybe you will have cause to rejoice because in many cases for those who a merely surviving, they have been exempted from the tax.
“Like a gentleman I was on a panel with last two weeks commented on taxation, the evidence suggests that two things to strengthen democracy, one you pay taxes and vote.
“When you pay taxes, you are likely to vote and write letters to your members of parliament and governor. You are likely to be interested more in governance and political system.
“The second one is if you own a home. Because once you own a home, you become stuck. You are likely to engage with your councilors about the drains, insecurity in your area.” He said.
Agbaje urged the government to work on subsiding home ownership.
Speaking on the recent World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) report that 139 million Nigerians are currently living below the poverty line, Agbaje considered the statistics as being over realistic as he held that the country would have been in chaos with such figure.
He however called for continuous economic development and interventions to raise Nigerians above the poverty line.
“If 139 million Nigerians are living under poverty, we won’t be to walk on the street. We will be near chaos.
“We are considerably advancing in that direction, but I think we should calm down.
“The shortest way to take people out of poverty is for the economy to continue growing.” He said.
On food inflation, Agbaje attributed the inflation to insecurity which, according to him, affects food production and value chain.
“Once food is taken out of multidimension of poverty, the poverty is manageable. We must deal with the issue of food inflation.
“We’ve always acknowledged that it is complicated by the problem of insecurity which is affecting food production and food value chain.
“The most important thing we can do at this point in time is to take actions that reduce the insecurity and its impact on the food value chain.” Agbaje said.
He called for extension service, agronomy support, and healthcare which he claimed are meant to be largely done by state government.