Tax Reform Bills: Minister, Customs, others point out grey areas to be addressed 

Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, John Enoh, the Nigeria Customs Service and other stakeholders, have pointed out some grey areas in the Tax Reform Bills for the National Assembly to address.

The observations were made Wednesday at the commencement of public hearing on the bills, organised by the special committee of the House of Representatives for that purpose.

Making presentation before the panel, Enoh said while the Federal Ministry of Industrial, Trade and Investment, agree “completely with the tax reform bills”, there were observations particularly on the National Tax Bill 2024 on two areas.

“These two areas apply to both mandates that are presently prevalent in the ministry, the mandate on industry and the mandate on trade and investment in Section 198 (2 and 3).

“I’d like to call attention to the fact that the Export Processing Zones Associations organized a conference in Lagos last week. The Minister of Trade and Investment was present and it was a very chaotic meeting and all of that has to do with the reactions and the commentaries on section 198(2 and 3), section fifty seven and some particular clauses in the second schedule,” he said.

Also in his submissions, the Comptroller General of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi, said “we observed that this is part of a wider effort by Mr. President to improve the business in Nigeria, make it more business friendly and of course more competitive. As a stakeholder, we however expressed some concerns.

“I will make reference to some few sections where we observed the jurisdictional conflicts between the provisions of the Joint Revenue Board bill, section 23 and 29 of the bill, and section 41A of the Joint Revenue Bill. Basically, these are jurisdictional conflict issues.

“In the, Nigerian Revenue Service established bill, section 16 to completely legislates Nigeria Custom Service out of existence, if you pardon my words. So we raised our objection, our observation also on section 4S. And in section 4S, this is also another omnibus provision. This particular provision gives the proposed NRS oversight functions over all taxes and levies”.

Others who pointed a few areas include the Revenue Mobilisatiin Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMFAC), Fiscal Responsibility Commission and the Tax Lawyers and Advisors Forum amongst others.