Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) has declared support for tax reform bills pending at the National Assembly, saying its support should not be misconstrued as imposition of the bills on Nigerians.
Chief Executive Officer of NESG, Dr. Tayo Aduloju stated the group’s position on Friday in Abuja during NESG’ s quarterly media engagement.
The NESG is the largest platform for the private sector players in the country and its position on the contentious tax reforms bills came against the backdrop of wide stakes controversy trailing them.
Aduloju described the debate as healthy and robust, and urged lawmakers not to suspend deliberation on them but instead, “open hearing on the bills and hear views of Nigerians with regards to them.”
This is coming just as the Chairman of Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reform Committee, Mr. Taiwo Oyedele yesterday, continued his engagement with Nigerians, trying to clarify some of the controversial aspects of the bills relating to the Value Added Tax (VAT) via his official X handle.
Speaking with the media yesterday, Aduloju said the tax reform committee in which NESG is a member consulted widely with all the relevant stakeholders before coming out with the bill.
On the efforts that were made before the bill was made public, Aduloju said, “NESG has been a member of this committee since its inception. So, we’ve also – yes, in helping the committee think about its work, we provided analytics, modeling scenarios on almost any clause that has a potential effect on a number. “We simulated the number and we wanted to simultaneously achieve four things within the bills.”
On the VAT controversy, he said: We have all seen the production and consumption numbers. Everyone can then see for themselves that the country needs a debate about a location where the factors of production are converged to create productions, and the location where the purchasing power to consume exists. Both are important for economic stability”, NESG boss said.
He however noted that, “The trade-off is what we are trying to knock into the framework and why we thought of this in the first instance is that for the first time we are having workshops, debates on production. It hasn’t been happening before but it’s happening now.
“Vague bills that say nothing about tax with massive discretion for people to do what they’ve done over the years have not helped. The thought put in some of these bills requires this debate”, he said adding that NESG supports tax reforms bills.
On his part, Oyedele dispelled the rumour that proposed VAT reform will increase inflation, saying if anything, it will reduce inflation.
