CIVIL SOCIETY TAX COMPLIANCE ADVOCACY WORKSHOP 2020.
Theme: Tax Remittance, the Economic Challenges; Repositioning the Nation’s Economy in the Face of Covid-19 pandemic, Through Tax Compliance Among Citizens.
The Civil Society Tax Compliance Advocacy Workshop in partnership with Federal Inland Revenue Service convened by Initiative for Leadership and Economic Watch in Nigeria in partnership with other allied Civil Society, billed to instil and inculcate tax orientation and its value to the nation’s development in order to reposition the minds of Nigerians on the issue of statutory accrued tax payment by citizens to government and for the general wellbeing of the society, to further increase tax awareness in Nigeria.
The more taxes are paid, the more monies the government gets to work with, in order to meet up with the 21st century challenges and its encumbrances. The Conference will engender a new approach to reducing tax linkages, manipulations, and evasion; for accurate tax accounting systems reporting and monitoring to further secure the nation’s economy.
The huge vacuum created with respect to citizens tax remittance to government needs to be covered urgently in order to increase tax remittance participation among the citizens which must be sought after at this material time, where Mr. President, Muhammadu Buhari, is looking very keenly on improving taxes across every stratum of the economy in order to generate more revenue for economic expansion, not to jettison the obvious numerical figure of Nigeria population strength which is over 200 million people, yet the people and businesses that are categorised for tax collection under the Federal Inland Revenue Service, well-structured tax administration; is very low as ascertained by experts.
The contract between the government and the people is a two-way thing, If the citizens wants the government to work and build infrastructure, there’s a need for the people to pay taxes. The former minister of finance told the King of France in 1789, Louis XVI, that the people’s expectation for the King to be able to provide adequate security, presupposes that the people provides for the king, the necessary means to do so; it’s important that, such principle is taken into account.
X-RAYING TAX CHALLENGES AND SHORTFALL
The abysmally low tax compliance in the rural areas in Nigeria, is one of the major challenges, due to lack of rural dwellers’ participation in tax payment to the government. These has further reduced revenue generating, whereas millions of businesses are transacted within the rural communities, yet government gets almost zero tax compliance from those businesses in communities across 774 local governments with over 8000 communities in Nigeria.
Tax evasion is a global challenge that every nation in the world faces, and many have overtime improved on the tax security systems of their country to further reduce tax invaders, possibly fish out perpetrators, either for sanctions or fines; the tax evasion negative trends have affected the nation’s economy by reducing taxes government would have collected; a huge loss for the economy, which may lead to financial crisis subsequently. If not properly addressed.
Lack of proper tax collection automated systems, affects all facets of our business live as a nation, which supposed to be the ideal approach towards strengthening tax collection system in Nigeria, as it is played in other parts of the world, to give room for proper monitoring of records, to enhance Nigeria tax system from time to time, for all-inclusive compliance in order to improve the nation’s economy.
The challenges of the informal sector with regards to tax compliance is huge, the financial potentials that are inherent in the informal sector of the society, is also huge, even more than the formal sector which is taxable, this reality is present in our day to day activities and has further shown that the number of businesses that are remitting taxes to the government is far lower than the ones that are not remitting taxes to authority, either small, medium, or large scale business enterprises.
OBJECTIVES OF THE WORKSHOP
- To advocate for rural financial inclusion as a medium to get the rural dwellers involved in tax payment, to further improve tax remittance among citizens.
- Proffer measures on how to reduce tax leakage, as a way to cushion and thicken tax collection in Nigeria, while boosting revenue generating.
- Push for the need for consistent effort towards achieving a unified tax monitoring system and payment evaluation, which is fundamental in building public confidence on the nation’s tax system.
- Advocate for government to tap into the gains inherent in informal sector taxation, by categorizing the informal sector, so that they can be taxable, which will be an added advantage for government to generate more revenue through rural citizens’ tax compliance sensitization drive.
THE WORKSHOP TOPICS
- The economic gains in the informal sector; tax compliance and its associated benefit to the nation, towards achieving rapid national economic growth.
- Tax evasion, and its negative effects on the nation’s economy; and way to reducing tax leakages and the way forward, in order to boost revenue.
- Strengthening tax collection accounting system to enhance accurate checks, monitoring, evaluation, and to ensure tax compliance is at its peak in Nigeria.
In lieu of the aforementioned, we hereby present the second Edition of Civil society Tax Compliance Advocacy Workshop, an annual event; strategically billed to hold 30th October 2020, to cross ventilate on how Initiative for Leadership and Economic Watch in Nigeria can assist in the promotion of tax awareness in Nigeria, in order to increase government revenue, so that the government can have enough resources to implement the Nation’s Budget, we are deeply concern about the short fall in tax remittance due to the pandemic, and we are fully ready as CSO, to help awaken the consciousness of the Citizens to their civic responsibility and fashion out areas of collaborations with government and other relevant stakeholders, both in the private sector and the public, to continue to push Tax Education and awareness in Nigeria. The overall interest is to promote tax compliance among Nigerian Citizens for economy growth.
These and more, necessitated the need to thoughtfully and thoroughly developed TAX COMPLIANCE TEN COMMANDMENTS AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE TO NATION BUILDING, which can also be digitalized, as advocacy tool to penetrate every nooks and crannies of the society with the message of all-inclusive tax compliance among the citizens, imbibing the culture of paying accurate taxes to government, to further increase tax payment participation in Nigeria, to raise a new generation of tax payers in order to expand the tax base of Nigeria economy for national productivity.