The Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Mr. Taiwo Oyedele, has stated that the tax reform bills currently before the National Assembly are expected to be passed into law in the first quarter (Q1) of 2025, while the implementation will commence in July.
Oyedele also said his committee had no objection to the new value-added tax (VAT) sharing formula proposed by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), declaring that the worst was behind Nigerians, with the good results being yielded by the ongoing economic reforms by President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
The tax expert stated these yesterday while enlightening the audience on the benefits of the ongoing reforms on The Platform organised by the Covenant Nation in Lagos.
Oyedele, according to an online medium, noted that Nigeria was living in a window-dressed economy, printing money to spend before President Tinubu took over in May 2023.
According to him, the implementation of the tax reform bills is expected to commence in July. “I need to talk about the tax reforms. Part of the expectation is: We expect the tax reforms to be approved, particularly the tax reform bills in 2025.
“Our expectation is before the end of Q1, and therefore, we can give notice to taxpayers to prepare themselves with capacity and begin to implement around July 1,” Oyedele explained.
While insisting that Tinubu’s economic reforms were yielding good results and that the worst was behind Nigerians, Oyedele emphasised that removing petrol subsidies was the best decision Nigeria ever made.“Removing subsidies is the best decision we made as a country. And we can now say that for once, the subsidy is gone.
“We were living in window-dressed realities. If you look back to about two years ago, the naira exchange rate was N450 depending on who you asked.
But was our exchange rate really N450? If you wanted to buy petrol, it was under N200 per litre, but was it really under N200 per litre?“There wasn’t Band A at the time.
Electricity was what it was at the time, but was that really the price? A country can afford to sell petrol at N200 per litre if you can afford it. But there is everything wrong if you cannot afford it.