A tax expert, Mac-Antony Dike, on Wednesday, advised the Federal Government to sustain its zeal of generating more revenue from tax defaulters to reduce borrowing.
Dike, a former President of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria, CITAN, gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos.
He said that sustaining the zeal for tax collection was sacrosanct to check borrowing.
“There is nothing wrong with borrowing, but maintaining this drive will stop it
as funds gotten from tax defaulters can be used to diversify the economy and create wealth,’’ the expert said.
Dike said that retrieving the tax debts could boost non-oil sector’s contribution to the GDP.
“With the continuous execution of this model, the earnings of government will shore up and will be able to meet many competing demands.
“This is the model other advanced societies have used to generate revenue for the government to meet obligations to the electorate,’’ the expert said.
Dike said that this new approach of raking revenue from taxes would also ensure that government closed the infrastructure gap.
“Employing this means of raking in money is one of the best ways of making money to meet the nation’s infrastructure needs which is in trillions.
“It is an easy way of making revenue for the government to expedite the industrialisation of the country with less borrowing,’’ Dike said.
NAN reports that barely two weeks after it directed its searchlight on accounts of recalcitrant billionaire taxpayers, the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, had collected over N12.6 billion in tax revenue.
The Executive Chairman, FIRS, Tunde Fowler, disclosed this when he received the Acting Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, during her visit to FIRS headquarters in Abuja.
NAN
