₦airaland Forum

delkuf:
so the government cannot give us basic amenities. They can't give regular electricity, good roads and a better healthcare. And you want us to continue paying more and more tax.


Nigerian will get sense one day.

The private sector will have to be involved in solving power. To have 50000 MW like South Africa there will need to be an investment of up to 50 billion dollars and we are more than four times the population of South Africa. Therefore we need 200 billion dollars for the same level of power. Even more than and government budget is not more than thirty billion dollars. State governments have been given the go ahead to seek partners and solve the problem but they are taking baby steps. The market is there that will pay for the power but here we are. However people are solving power issues by going off grid. Off grid power now will be much more than grid power

Fearurcreeator:
Nigerians normally be anini. High income earners no dey wan pay tax ... Na cow and throw Money for burial them like. Show offs. That tax them must pay

It takes leadership. Nobody wants to pay tax in any country.

jaxxy:
U are confusing urself not me. The Jews have never been Arabs and have never called themselves Arabs.

Israelis are not same as Egyptians they are different. Different ancestry and different religion..

If there was no Greek or Roman empires all Jews would be Arabs because that's their homeland

delkuf:
can I ask you a question and I need a simple answer. Can you say that if by Jan 2026 majorities of Nigerian start paying tax. And half of gdp is used for tax, will this govt use the money for our betterment. Will they give us free rent. Regular electricity. Good health care system.

Will this govt give us all the basic amenities we as citizen deserve. Just answer this question

Once you start collecting taxes you have to keep it flowing and to keep it flowing you must tend to the economy and you will do it whether or not you are corrupt. Once you have a hundred billion dollars budget and you have employed people and etc you can't go back to fifty billion

delkuf:
how is this government helping us. Didn't you read. The country that this guy is, he is paying 25 percent of his salary for tax and the govt is paying his children school fees and still pay the children. Free healthcare. Free rent.


But here you want us to pay more for tax with nothing the govt is doing for us.

I am not saying the government is helping now but to reach the level of what obtains in western europe, North America, Japan and etc you have to pay half of your GDP as taxes. No way around that

There is no need for any new tax in Nigeria. What is needed is for all tiers of government to take the taxes that is statutorily granted them. The federal government is taking most of its taxes already but the states and local governments are lagging behind

If the average state can have the revenue drive of Lagos state they will be able to more than double their revenue. In Lagos state there is no big business that does not file PAYE returns. Hotels, gas stations, bakeries and etc all do so. Many under report but they file something


The average state in Nigeria has over a million income earners working at various addresses in the states and all that is needed is to fix minimum wage and tax them at those addresses. There is no need for the federal government to impose additional taxes.
If states in general get serious with taxes, it will become apparent that they need to be paying a percentage up to the federal government


To have the efficiency of Western Europe, Japan, North America and etc you have to be ready to pay half of your GDP as taxes.

jaxxy:
Israel is not Arab they are not descendants of Ishmael..They are Jews.

There are all kinds of Arabs. Jews were originally Arabs. Their homeland is in the area. It is only that the Ashkenazi spent 2000 years in Europe. If Egyptians Syrians and etc are being called Arabs that makes Jews too the same thing.
Then Arabs are not descendants of Ishmael who was a random person with no known descendants who lived and died in Egypt or Palestine like five thousand years ago

ZombieDredd:
Oya compare to US with our population.

Stop jumping around the place

US budget is over six trillion dollars for 330 million people while Nigeria budget is less than 30 billion dollars for 220 million people but if we adjust for cost of living the US budget is not more than 600 billion dollars in Nigeria. What 6 trillion dollars can do in the US less than 600 billion dollars will do it in Nigeria. If we had a budget of over one hundred billion dollars it will go a long way

Buccalcavity2:
Ok. Let me go into a bit more details. The summary of all biz plus wages is in revenue. The moment someone can track inflows to your account, he can tell your turnover and you can be taxed on that. Now there is room for adjustment, which is why you are to file for taxes every year to explain that there are associated expenses with that revenue or this part of the revenue is just a transfer not revenue (e.g gift). Now there is going to be another department that probes your filing if it is true or not. These processes are suported by laws compelling all banks and companies to submit thier transactions for every individual yearly. And of course there are peolple that bypass these all over the world, hence there are laws that make you pay more than you planned to save (while trying to evade).

Revenue is not always indicative of strength of a business. A trader can have a huge revenue but the profit margin will be small. It also differs from business to business. In a country like Nigeria some people have a large chunk of their revenue not passing through banks. However it is difficult to lie about number of employees. In Nigeria wage tax belongs to states while corporate tax is for fg. To collect the company tax is always very hard but wage tax is easy. That is my point

ZombieDredd:
Do you know about Libya during ghadaffi days?

A country with the population of Osun but with the revenue of Nigeria is not a good example and even at that Libya was not a country that was leading in any thing. It was not a giant in anything and it was not an immigrant worker destination. There is more to life than the government providing everything for you. Then the oil revenue in Libya should be up to half of the GDP

horlando30:
It is a misconception that Nigeria is rich. We are very poor nation, I would say wretched. The gulf country you compared us with have very tiny population and make more dollars than us. Nigeria with a population of 200 million makes less than $40B every year while Saudi with 30 million people makes about $400B annually.

Nigeria simply has too much mouth to feed with little money. For us to be nearly as comfortable as gulf nations, we need to make atleast $500B anually for our population size

If you don't join hands together via taxes you will be poor. You collect the tax and part of what you do is invest in local production. You support your entrepreneurs because they can't do it alone.

Buccalcavity2:
Lol. You expose your ignorance. It is not VERY difficult to know earnings of business. Go and read the financial act recently signed and you will know that it is not difficult. You seriously think your environment is diff from england, france.....Humans are same all over the world. Biz concepts are same. If they can track itin thier country, Nigeria can track hers. Lets not be negative

I mean it is what they want to show you that you will see. However with wages it is different. You can make money from company tax but it is easier with personal income tax. All countries make more money from wage tax than any other tax. Wage tax is where the money is not company income tax

CSTRR:
Everybody in Nigeria pays taxes one way or the other, as long as you buy goods and services.

If you don't know this yet, then you shouldn't be taken seriously.

Are you not ashamed to come from a nation of 220 million whose budget is less than some university budget in the USA?

Buccalcavity2:
Dont confuse yourself. That is how it is set up currently. Once you have an earning, it is tax deductible based on apt gradation. What has been happening before now is that the govt had no system and requisite law to track "informal" earnings. So now it is implemented. Theres already law guiding how business owners should pay taxes!
Dont join multitude to support nonsense. This is long overdue

It is very difficult to know the earning of any business. Therefore most tax income come from paye or personal income tax of employees

Mindlog:
And why are the governors not getting the one million income tax payers in their states?

They are not motivated. They prefer to sit and wait for allocations. Only Lagos is trying but Lagos is not doing up to twenty percent of what is possible. In Lagos today you can not be in big business without filing paye report. They will shut you down.

Mindlog:
In simple words, how can more Nigerians be motivated to pay tax?

People pay tax by force in all countries. If the governor of the average Nigerian state want one million income tax payers he will get it easily. The average state have more than one million people earning income at different addresses

koning:
I hope you know that what is taxable is your income. For a shop owner this means the profits he makes or reports at the end of the year. Not the capital he used to stock his shop. The tax assessment is even a problem in technologically advanced countries, not to mention a nation like Nigeria.

Trump has boasted many times that he pays zero taxes. He is a billionaire. He has declared bankruptcy 5 to 6 times. Never paid a dime in taxes.

FIRS has a huge task in their hands and lawyers are waiting on the wings to chop heavy on law suits.

Conclusion: PROPER TAX COLLECTION CAN NOT WORK IN NIGERIA. How the hell would you tax the Mallam or Alhaji changing Dollar and Euros all over the country. What is their income?

Corporate tax is different from personal income tax. Personal income tax is where the bulk of tax revenue resides. If you employ you must pay minimum wage to yourself and employee and if you can't you will be shut down. It is corporate tax that can be dodged not tax on wages and if you are caught dodging corporate tax too ..

nairalanda1:
Quite true...and no, I don't support any party. My view on this was formed under PDP and GEJ when tax to gdp was less than 6%. I WAS even surprisedGEJ was not doing more about it.

Tinubu claims to be doing more, but tax to gdp is still below 15%

Nigerians want everything free. As far as I know the USSR was one of the countries to provide everything free for its people....and by the seventies they were borrowing heavily in secret from the IMF and the developed powers. East germany used to do same, and by the eighties they were borrowing from their western neighbour.

The problem is saying this means you are a tinubu supporter. The funny thing is that many of these people would laugh at the idea of a five bedroom house selling for less than N100000 naira, yet that is their real attitude towards cost of things.


As for me, I really wish we could give water, petrol, electricity for free. We gat to many poor people in this country...but the price is heavy loans to pay for all that, and eventual economic collapse. The type that would make tinubulation economy look like the good old days.

Are there not many poor people in the UK? All countries have poor people. What the government does is make sure the poor people are paid well wherever they work so they can be taxed and the money used to develop the country.

Buccalcavity2:
What is the per capita revenue from oil in gulf countries vs Nigeria? They can afford zero tax but Nigeria cannot!
The annoying part is that some are already paying taxes, The majotity of which are going to get a relief from this tax law. The main complainaners are the people that never paid and are not willing to pay! Its crazy! Make i dey pay tax but you do NOT want to pay because you are in the informal sector! Yet you want to use amenities like me.
Anybody complaining about the tax law should get his brain checked!

It is government that is not serious. It is easy to make everybody pay once you fix minimum wage. If you own a shop you must pay yourself above minimum wage and pay your workers minimum wage on which tax is deductible

Baxilexi:
I guess the gulf countries are not working well.

We have natural resources, that if managed properly the government has all that it needs to attend to its duties. Cut down the size of government, adopt fiscal discipline and Nigeria would work with minimal taxation.

Even the golf countries will have almost half of the GDP in government hands. Then you might get some high paying jobs in those countries but they are not advanced countries. In any advanced country a chunk of the GDP is taken as taxes. Free education free health and etc consumes a lot of money. You can't make a country like Nigeria a good country without taking half of the GDP as taxes. Good things cost money

Baxilexi:
The government has lost public trust hence why this new tax law will cause more chaos than praise.

They’ve mismanaged the countries resources, removed all forms of succor and now still wish to pauperize struggling Nigerians.

I would advise that the tax law be suspended till Nigerians can see practical use of our commonwealth, not cars, houses and largesse.

Also, they need to reorganize the tax categories. A Nigerian earning 3 million NGN per annum is poor. That’s less than $2000 USD.
Put rent, energy, transportation, fees, healthcare, feeding, personal needs and utilities into the equation and there’s no way the FIRS Boss can justify the taxation.

I don't support the sales tax on petrol. It is the states that should buckle up on income tax. Then minimum wage should be high enough to bear tax and it should be enforced on all employers. The money should be used for free healthcare education and etc. If a country will move forward half of the GDP must be taken as taxes. No income should be tax free. How do you help the common people if they don't pay tax?

Before a country can work very well, half of the GDP must be taken as taxes

Botragelad:
So where did all the ANCIENT ISRAELIS go ? Did they just disappear into thin air?

Where are the Assyrians today? Less than five million people.

Cromagnon:
I asked for black run not black majority
You know damn well t and t is run by white hotel chains

So Nigeria is excellent
Rent is cheap here by your logic

I 30 countries by GDP per capita seem to be doing fine with high cost of labor


Name them
when had govt ever done well with other ppl money and you want to give them more

There is nothing to be happy about in ultra high income per Capita. It drives production away from your country. For example China produces more than ten times more steel than the USA with only four times the population and it is like that in all sectors. Why would you say a black majority country is not black run?. Then countries like Ghana, Niger Togo and more or less any African country have corruption levels ranked low. Even lower than countries like Russia or Belarus. Their main problem is they don't depend on personal income taxes. If they start doing that they will be like Europe. All of South America Eastern Europe and etc have corruption levels and development level similar to Africa. Only western Europe, Japan North America and etc are outliers and that is because the economies are highly formalized. You can't escape taxes. No other reason. If your government is dependent on personal income taxes you will be ok. It is as simple as that.
No country is doing well with high cost of labor. Your economy can't be competitive with high cost of labor. Western economies are no longer as competitive as they can be. They can only compete where they have knowhow
Rent is cheap and homelessness is rare in Nigeria. Where I stay in Nigeria there are no homeless people

Cromagnon:

Is he lying
Listen to you here
Look at all, all, all black countries, not one run well, not a single one in Africa, the Caribbean or in america

There are many black majority countries with a high per capita income if that is your criteria. There are some in the Americas with per capita income comparable to the USA like Bahamas Trinidad and Tobago but a high per capita income is in itself a failing because it is caused by a high cost of living. If cost of a good apartment is less than 500 dollars a year what do you need an income of 50k dollars a year for? 5k will be ok. High cost of labor makes an economy less competitive
Then there are many countries in Africa with good leadership and less corruption. They only need to gear up tax collection like the west so as to be able to help their people more. What any country needs is hands joined together via taxes and there are many countries in Europe that need it too. Eastern Europe's economy is informal largely as well, it is therefore not an African problem only

In the 80s a fresh graduate can buy a brand new car in Nigeria but now it is no longer possible because high cost of living in the west has made cost of labor too high for things produced there.
What needs to be done is to make cost of living equal in all countries

When you use equity for your operations as a company you might make less than ten percent returns and be content. People who build houses for rent make less than five percent. Therefore shareholders can be okay with five percent. They can gain other things like jobs and board appointments.
However when you use loans to operate instead of equity the banks maybe asking for at least eighteen percent and this will make your products more expensive.

Travel is good but your home country is always the best for you. Any country you are people are struggling and the average person in any country will not achieve more than own their own homes and train their children. No matter the average income.

If people join hands together via taxes, things will be easier in any country.

A single person in Nigeria can live on 1500 dollars a year and not be homeless have a smart phone and live in a decent accomodations whereas in the western world you would probably be homeless with a ten thousand dollars per annum income. With ten thousand dollars per annum in Nigeria you can marry two wives.
In the US a billion dollar company might be employing only 200 people comparable to someone using only a few million dollars in Nigeria. If someone like Elon Musk were operating in China or India he will be worth only a fraction of his net worth not to talk of Nigeria. You hear of big money in the west but you can't do much with it inside those economies.
In Nigeria you don't need to earn much because the cost of living is low. You can build a solid home for less than 20k dollars and this home in the western world will be worth over 400k dollars.
Someone employing 500 people in Nigeria is the same s someone doing thesame in the UK but one is a dollar billionaire while the other is not. Don't be received by the numbers

Globad:
When Oyo empire collapsed, which states of cities took over in Yorubaland?

Oyo collapses when it was burnt down by Ilorin but Ibadan grew and resuscitated the empire. It was from Ibadan that the British took the twins. A civil war broke out and for seventeen years Ibadan was not able to put it down. The Yoruba leaders including the Alaafin wrote the British to come and settle it.

taiwiki:
I totally agreed with most of what you said except Jews have historical ties to the land. My question is which Jews? Ashkenazi Jews are complete Europeans that converted to judaism. Many Jews still lived in palestine and other ME countries before the creation of the state of israel. The colonizers do not plan to stop grabbing more lands (greater israel) so they won't even compensate anyone.

There would have been no Jews in Europe if not for the Roman and the Greek empires. All Jews would have been Arabs. However they stayed in Europe for two thousand years and had become Europeans but this does not change their history and they held themselves separate in Europe. What I am saying is that the crowd supporting the Jews and not only the Jews should have explored the option of compensating the Palestinians. Local Jews were not up to ten percent of Palestine early in the 20th century. However two thousand years ago the place was majority Jewish

taiwiki:
let me ask you some questions: 1. were there no Jews living in palestine before the creation of the state of israel? 2. Did the Palestinians not receive Jews and Armenian refugees in the past? 3. Why do the isrealis only invite mostly Europeans Jews if its not colonisation and why displacing palestinians and having an apatheid? Migratory Arabs you say? Their DNA match the ancient original habitants of their area more than the ashkenazis whose dnas are Europeans. They speak arabic because of the growth of islam. Some Muslims in Nigeria can't speak English but are fluent in arabic too (will you call them arabs). Moreover their ancient language of hebrew and aramaic became extinct.

If we even accept that all Jews migrated from ME and are all descendants of Isreal ( Jacob) and need to go back, why displace Palestinians becauese of religion? It is like saying the Yorubas in Brazil and other carribbean countries (both white and black) who still practise Isese (Yoruba Traditional religion) should come back to SW and we practising islam or Christianity should leave because they were originally from here. Would you support it if everyone in the world decide to reclaim what they believe belonged to their ancestor 5,000yrs ago. By their logic everyone migrated from somewhere too and for anyone who believed Adam and eve were the first humans on earth, we should all have claim to a piece of ME since they are our first ancestors.

The Palestinians are the owners of the land but there are now over seven million Jews there. The Jews have an historical attachment to the land because it was where their ancestors lived two thousand years ago. Anybody that wants to solve the problem should be thinking about how to compensate the Palestinians as they are the only people to be driven from their homes in the twentieth century.

It must always be remembered that the attempt to brand the Benin empire as non Yoruba is history revisionism. During the days of the empire Benin city population was 50k people and it was like Akure and Warri a Yoruba speaking city. The Edo speakers were living in the suburbs. They entered the city only after the empire declined. The Portuguese recorded Yoruba being spoken in the old city. The rest of the Yoruba were the same with the old Benin in language and culture and saying Benin was an Edo empire is an untruth. The old Warri and the old Benin saw themselves as one and they spoke the same language. However the new Benin is Edoid