mrvitalis:

The people must be made to pay tax so taut they in turn would be forced to check mate their leaders and not be easily bribed or moved by sentiment during election

Ovamboland:


You'd be shocked to know learn only few people are interested in asking the right questions because they hardly see government revenue that gets stolen as their own sweat.

The reality of what is collected shows the government has been unable to collect a decent amount of earned income from Nigerians. While average countries like South Africa collect about 16% of GDP as tax advanced countries in Europe Collect on the average over 30% of GDP as tax. Almighty Nigeria is struggling to collect 4% of our GDP as tax.

That's why even though our GDP is larger than that of SA, their government has about 3 times spending power as our government for a much smaller population. If they can finance a 6000 MW power project a year our government will struggle to find money for 1000 MW project because of our bigger overhead, salaries for huge number of civil servants, etc

DarryOsh:



I must say that your comment drove me to dig deeper. I have to concede that our Tax to GDP ratio is rather low ( 6% according to Wikipedia, while S. Africa's is 27%). For some countries it is almost 50%. And yes, some experts believe that high taxes forces the government to become more accountable to its citizens. You definitely know what you are saying.

But in my opinion for higher taxes to translate into commensurate delivery , there is a minimum requirement that must be met. That minimum requirement is strong institutions, (near) zero corruption. In summary, a working system that delivers. I don't think the lack of government revenue is the reason for our non-working systems.

So I am shifting ground. I agree we definitely need to collect more taxes. But, I think that our most pressing problem at this time is not tax, it is the system that will manage that tax and manage it well.

Rchibs:
¤ If you have Food in your house, Clothes on your body, A roof over your head and a place 2 sleep, You're richer than 75% of the entire world.
¤ If you have Money in your wallet, A little change, And Can go anywhere you want You are among the top 25% of the world's wealthy people.
¤ If you are alive today with more health than illness, You are more blessed than the million people who will not survive this week and die.
¤ If you can actually 'READ' this message and understand it, You are more fortunate than the 3 billion people in the world who cannot see, cannot read or suffer mental retardation.
¤ Life is not about complaining pain and sorrows. It's about a thousand other reasons to Thank God.

Ovamboland:


Thanks for carrying out research on this issue and i really appreciate your candour for freely expressing your findings, you are destined for greater things

I absolutely agree our instituition are very weak even to adequately manage the increase in revenue from tax. A lot needs to be done in that regards, but it we will wait forever and keep passing the buck for as long as the responsibility of financing government does not rest on the shoulder of the citizens. We will keep waiting for the elusive great leader who come and right all the wrongs and he/she is more likely to fail than succeed. The example is what we have at present.

It's the level of our engagement with the system as citizens, asking questions, cajoling our senators and Reps to pass good laws, making adequate use of FOI bills to make information on how our money is spent public, taking pains to verify spending profiles and contracts, financial forensics etc that can make our taxes count. Expecting the current crop of politicians to do all these on there own may never happen.

Do you think a citizen who earned 500,000 Naira in a whole year and paid about 100,000 as tax to the government will also collect 1,000 at election point to vote in a thief to go and eat and mismanage his 100,000 Naira tax funds?