RE-INVENTING LEGISLATION ON DISTRIBUTION OF TAXING POWERS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Taxes are vital tools for development and governance of any country. By payment of taxes, citizens contribute to building sovereign states and governments use these revenues responsibility to meet their obligations in providing essential public services to all citizens. Taxes are therefore very important to every nation that it cannot be under estimated. The richest countries in the world generate revenue internally mostly through effective tax administration strategy which ensures that citizens, firms and institutions honour their obligation without fear or favour. However, for a given tax regime to actualize the afore-cited objective, such a tax culture shall epitomize simplicity, coherence, clarity and elegance in the drafting of its taxing statutes to aid understanding and comprehensibility. In Nigeria, an extant legislation has partitioned collectible taxes among the three tiers of government to embrace and sustain the enumerated objective. Thus the paper, therefore, examines to what extent these three tiers of government have been able to adhere to the law, as it were. It is demonstrated that the said three different levels of government (especially the states and local government) do not keep themselves within the province of their allotted taxing powers. This, unfortunately, has given rise to duplicity of taxation which seem to compound the problem of tax compliance in Nigeria. The paper has advocated further review of the extant laws on the subject, among others.