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Senator representing Ondo South Senatorial district, Jimoh Ibrahim has said rich Nigerians should be made to pay taxes.
He said the government should begin to tax luxury.
According to him, it’s a global practice that when an economic crisis hits a nation, the government directs its policies towards making the rich citizens pay heavy taxes for the nation to come out of its economic quagmire.
Senator Ibrahim stated this on Tuesday while briefing Senate Press Corps after plenary on Tuesday.
He gave clarification on his intervention at plenary on the consideration of the report of the joint committees on Finance and National Planning and Economic Affairs on the 2025-2027 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP).
He said it would be the first time that the nation would tax net worth citizens, adding that adequate taxing of economic net worth Nigerians was a means of shoring up the nation’s revenue base.
“My worry is that the rich in Nigeria are not paying enough taxes in order to be a good jolly fellow with the poor.
“In other countries, taxes are paid on transactions. The rich need to pay more taxes and one of the areas where our economic gap can be covered is when we address those lacuna.
“Luxury taxes should be monitored and collected. We should look at a law that will police transactional tax on the rich,” he said.
To make this effective, he said “there should be an adequate data bank of the taxable rich”.
“GDP to tax ratio in Nigeria is 18 percent, while the test 72 percent are not taxed.
“It is unfortunate economically that 72 percent of the Nigerian population are not in the tax net,” he added.
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