New Tax Laws Will Not Trigger Automatic Bank Deductions – Oyedele

Taiwo Oyedele

The Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Mr Taiwo Oyedele, has assured Nigerians that the new tax laws will not involve automatic deductions from personal bank accounts. He recently revealed that the reforms are based on self-declaration rather than direct debits, and Nigerians have been reacting.

According to him, reports saying that the government would monitor or debit individual bank accounts are false, and taxpayers would only be required to declare their income at the end of the tax year.

Oyedele added that the reform framework has been designed to be simple, transparent and fair, especially for small business owners and individuals earning low incomes.

His words, “People think that the government will debit their bank accounts from next year, and how they even came up with that, I have no idea. Nobody will debit your account for any amount you transfer. Whether it’s a billion or one thousand naira, at the end of the year, you tell the government yourself.

You know what constitutes your income and what doesn’t. So you tell the government: ‘This is my income and here is the tax.’ If you are exempted, you simply declare: ‘This is my income, and I am exempted from tax.’ It is a very simple process that we are simplifying further.

One of the biggest benefits is that if you run a small business as a sole proprietor, an enterprise, or you are just hustling, the system will no longer be regressive, taxing the vulnerable more. We’ve made it progressive.”

WOW.