The National Economic Council (NEC), has urged President Bola Tinubu to immediately withdraw the Tax Reforms Bill from the National Assembly to create room for further consultations and consensus building.
Oyo State Governor ,Seyi Makinde announced this while briefing State House correspondents at the end of the 144th NEC meeting headed by Vice-President Kashim Shettima, in Abuja.
The recommendation was coming following the controversies that trailed the bills.
Makinde explained that the council members agreed that it was important to allow for consensus building and understanding of the bill among Nigerians.
He said, “The Council acknowledged that the country is underperforming on all indices as regards huge deductions from major revenue sources, also tax to GDP ratio and so on.
“So after extensive deliberation, NEC noted the need for sufficient alignment between and among the stakeholders for the proposed reforms.
“So Council therefore recommends the need to withdraw the bill currently before the National Assembly on tax reforms so that we can have wider consultations and also build consensus around these reforms for the benefit of the entire country, and also to give people, for them to know the vision and where we are moving the country in terms of a tax reform, because there’s really a lot of miscommunication, misinformation.
“So, the bill should be withdrawn from the National Assembly and then there will be consultations afterwards”.
Before now, the Northern Governors’ Forum (NGF) chaired by Governor Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe State after a meeting on Sunday, announced complete rejection of the derivation-based model for Value Added Tax (VAT) distribution in the new tax bills.
Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa clarified the position of Governors from the region, noted that they were against the VAT bill because it would be unfair to the north.
He stated that the Governors were not against President Bola Tinubu, saying they brought him into power.
Sule said, “We can’t bring in President Tinubu and then oppose him. If you look at the composition of the meeting you will see that there are people from the APC and the PDP. Some don’t even have a political party. We sat down and took the decision together.
“Some are traditional rulers. If you look at the law, it will be unfair to the north. By the time you say you are going to take something out of the sharing of the FAC and then say you are going to share something similar to something like that because that is the understanding we have based on the proposal. It’s going to be another 13% derivation.
“So, the states that have almost no VAT at the moment will end up actually with the shorter area of the stick. And you know, the 19 states of the north are generating very little when it comes to VAT at the moment.
“It’s very clear. I worked for some of these multi-national. I know how VAT is paid. When we were importing raw material at Dangote at Apapa port. We paid VAT first and then the finished product had VAT added to it.”
Earlier, on Thursday, Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, had spoken about the “misunderstandings and misgivings around the tax reform already embarked upon by the administration.”
