By Kolawole Ojebisi
After months of intense deliberation, the House of Representatives, on Wednesday, passed the tax reform bills transmitted to the National Assembly by President Bola Tinubu.
The bills were transmitted by Tinubu in October 2024 sparking debates about the rationale behind the move among Nigerians, particularly those of Northern extraction.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, members of the green chambers unanimously passed the bills at a session presided over by the Deputy Speaker, Benjamin Kalu,
The development followed the adoption of the harmonised versions of the reform bills by both the House and the Senate.
Taking the floor to commence the legislative business of the day is the Chairman of the House Committee on Finance, Abiodun Faleke (APC, Lagos).
Faleke, who headed the House team to the conference committee, presented the conference report to the House for consideration, stressing that the committee under his leadership, met and agreed on all areas of difference in the version passed by both chambers of the National Assembly.
Highlighting the areas where the committee worked on for harmonization, Faleke declared that there were 45 areas of difference in the Nigeria Tax Administration Bill, 12 areas of difference in the Nigeria Revenue Service Bill, 9 areas of difference in the Joint Revenue Board Bill and 46 areas of difference in the Nigeria Tax Bill.
He, however, added that all grey areas were resolved ahead of the passage.
While the conference committee agreed to retain the Senate version in some of the clauses, they also retained the House version in some others, making amendments in a few others.
According to Faleke, the conference committee agreed to “the imposition of a 4 per cent development levy on the assessable profit of all companies chargeable to tax under Chapters 2 and 3, except small companies and non-resident companies.”
They also agreed that the levy shall be collected by the Nigeria Revenue Service and paid into a special account created for the same purpose.
In the sharing formula, the legislator stressed that the “committee agreed that 50 per cent of the tax would go to the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, 15 per cent to the Education Loan Fund (up from 3 per cent agreed by the House), and 8 per cent to the Nigeria Information Technology Development Fund.”
Similarly, the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure is to get 8 per cent (down from 10 per cent earlier agreed by both chambers), the National Board for Technology Incubation is to get 4 per cent from the fund, defence and security infrastructure is to get 10 per cent while cyber security fund will get 5 per cent.
Meanwhile, the Social Security Fund, Nigeria Police Trust Fund, and National Sports Development Fund were excluded from the list of beneficiaries passed by the House of Representatives.
The committee also adopted a new clause 158, which imposes a 5 per cent surcharge on chargeable fossil fuel products provided or produced in Nigeria and shall be collected at the time a chargeable transaction occurs.
However, the committe asserted that both the green and red chambers unanimously agreed on the controversial Value Added Tax sharing formula by rejecting a proposal to increase the (VAT) to 10 percent, opting to retain the current rate at 7.5 per cent.
