Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Zack Adedeji, said yesterday that the tax reform bills recently presented to the National Assembly is not aimed at increasing tax or introducing new taxes into the nation’s tax books.
He said the reform is also not aimed at merging any government agency or with the responsibility of tax collection neither will it lead to any loss of job in all sectors of the country.
Speaking at a meeting with the House Committee on Finance ahead of the Second Reading of the bills, Adedeji said the four tax reform bills aimed to harmonise all tax laws scattered in different tax laws and establishment bills which he said has reduced the ineffective performance of tax in terms of tax collection.
He said: “We want to harmonise all the tax laws because we have tax laws scattered in different tax laws and different establishment laws passed. The implications of that is the multiplicity of taxes that people talk about because each agency that has tax law must implement that tax law.
“No agency is superior to the other and you cannot ask one agency not to carry out the order. So, Mr. President saw that this is not good for the economy and the only way to do that is to harmonise all the tax laws and have them in one place.”