House of Reps Member Opines That Small Scale Businesses Should Be Made to Pay Tax

A member of the Nigerian House of Representatives, Fakeye Olufemi, has called on the Federal Government and tax agencies to include small and medium, sized businesses such as carpenters, taxi or bus drivers, market men and women, in the taxation scheme as they are part of the country and are also high earners.

Fakeye who is a member of the ruling APC and represents Boluwaduro/Ifedayo/Ila federal constituency of Osun state in the house, opined that this will be another source of revenue for the federal government to finance her budget.

“And I pay attention to revenue shortfall for the government and I begin to ask myself and I recall when I was young, everybody pays taxes. Whether you are a farmer, your daddy was a carpenter, whatever he did for a living, he paid tax.Now we have tended to forgive everybody their taxation except those who have an income where the tax is taken out of your income and the rest paid to you.

I think our tax reform should be such that every Nigerian has a chance to contribute. Go out there and talk to 80 percent or 90 percent of the people of Nigeria, a lot of them that are self-employed; they don’t pay tax anymore.

So when we hear FIRS or tax organisations, even the tax joint board widening the tax net; why do they shy away from finding a way to make people pay — whether you are a carpenter, you are a taxi driver, you are selling rice in the market — these people make a lot of money but they don’t get to pay nothing. So I think that is an area I would like to see revenue-boosting.

The finance act 2020 exempts small companies with an annual turnover of not more than N25 million from paying company income tax (CIT).