$1bn To Be Garnered From New Tax Scheme, Adosun Says

Osinbajo on Friday June 30, signed the Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS).

The Scheme encourages voluntary disclosure of previously undisclosed assets and income for the purpose of payment of all outstanding tax liabilities. The Scheme will offer a limited waiver for declaration within the specified period of time.

Speaking on the Sunrise Daily, a Channels television programme, on Monday, Adeosun said the current administration recently discovered a massive tax evasion in the country.

According to her, many registered individuals and organizations have not been paying the right taxes for about 15 months.

She said Nigeria is currently facing a problem of untaxed money.

“I have not set a specific target because it is very difficult, anything over a billion dollars would be great but let me just give you some context,” she said.

“Some countries have raised between $7 billion to $15 billion, it really just depends on how much compliance we get from Nigerians, and it is not just high net worth Nigerians incidentally that are our target but companies.

“We found out that a lot of companies are evading taxes, paying minimum tax and shifting profits to other jurisdiction to make sure Nigeria gets a small percentage of the money generated in Nigeria.

“Even at the lower level we are finding massive tax evasion. We have only 14 million tax payers in Nigeria and the majority of them are PAYE, that is people who have their tax deducted at source.

“We have done quite an amount of work over 15 months looking at tax compliance in Nigeria. Our tax to GDP ratio is six percent, one of the lowest in the world. So we did a study, why are Nigerians not paying tax and why are tax revenue so low,” she said.

“What we found is a massive tax evasion on a major scale. A lot of people are registered, many of those that are registered are not paying the right taxes. We now have the data and we actually engaged a team of experts to go through the data and what we found is that in many cases, peoples lifestyle do not correlate with their tax returns. So there was massive tax invasion.

“We looked at properties abroad, properties in high-valued areas. We found that some peoples assets and lifestyle when compared to their tax returns – for example you have somebody with five or six properties you find someone paying N150,000 for the year.

“It all started with the fight against corruption, trying to trace stolen money, and we coming back to say no, your problem is untaxed money. A lot of money has gone out of Nigeria into property in high scale areas.”