He stated that 90 per cent of the current taxpayers are people who should not be taxed while advocating for a more streamlined and equitable tax system in the country.

This revelation was made during a breakout session at the ongoing 30th Nigeria Economic Summit organised by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group and the Ministry of Budget and National Planning on Monday in Abuja.

Oyedele emphasised the need to strike a balance between easing the tax burden for lower-income earners and ensuring the wealthy contribute more to government revenue.

“If you earn N100m a month, we are taking up to 25 per cent from the rich people. That’s because we need to balance the books,” Oyedele stated.

The fiscal policy expert said the government is prepared and determined to ensure that the right individuals pay taxes, noting that his committee is actively working to achieve the goal.

He added that the proposed changes are expected to take effect from January 2025, based on the passage of the bill by lawmakers.

For middle-income earners making N1.5m or less per month, Oyedele disclosed that their personal income tax obligations would decrease while those earning higher amounts would see incremental increases in their tax rates, eventually reaching 25 percent. Lower-income earners would be fully exempt from personal income tax.

The reforms also aim to ease the tax burden on businesses.

Oyedele noted: “Today, whatever VAT you (businesses) pay on assets—whether you’re building a factory, buying a laptop, or vehicles—you bear it. This increases your cost, and therefore, your pricing will go up. Once our reforms are implemented, you get the credit back 100 percent on services and assets.”

People will pay tax once we decide that they have to pay. What we realize is that almost 90 per cent of people who are paying taxes are those who should not have been paying in the first place,” he said.

“So that’s where we came up with the data that 97 per cent of the informal sector should be formally exempted from taxes. People do not understand where we are coming from. They’re not the ones to pay taxes. They’re just trying to survive.”

Regarding how his committee is working to ensure the right individuals pay taxes, Oyedele said the team would utilise primary data identification channels to accurately bring the appropriate group of taxpayers into the tax bracket.

Additionally, the corporate income tax rate is set to drop from 30 per cent to 25 per cent which Oyedele described as “huge” for businesses. Other significant tax adjustments include a reduction or elimination of VAT on essential goods and services such as food, health, education, accommodation, and transportation.

These essential services make up a large portion of household expenditure for the lower-income population, and the proposed reforms aim to lessen their financial burden.

However, Oyedele acknowledged that not all sectors would benefit from reduced tax rates. For other goods and services, the VAT rate would increase to ensure the government’s revenue book balance.

He also pointed out that inflation had already acted as a “disorderly” tax on the population, eroding the value of their money without the need for legislation.

In addressing concerns over tax incentives and waivers, Oyedele argued that indiscriminate incentives harm the economy and that removing unnecessary incentives could relieve the business sector without costing the government revenue.

“We cannot give all the incentives you are asking for. We think the biggest low-hanging fruit is removing these incentives, and that’s exactly what we are doing,” Oyedele concluded.

Oyedele said the VAT suspension will cushion the harsh economic effects of the fuel subsidy removal, as directed by President Bola Tinubu.

Oyedele, who appeared on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Wednesday, said,  “What the President wants us to do is that within the first 30 days, there are those low-hanging fruits that people have generally agreed that this is a problem but nobody has done anything about it.

“Personally, for example, this is not promising that it would be done, but I think that we should suspend VAT on diesel because we removed fuel subsidy on petrol and prices are going up.”

“We are going to table it before the committee. These are the things we want to do in the first 30 days,” he mentioned.

Oyedele, a former Fiscal Policy Partner and Africa Tax Leader at PriceWaterhouseCoopers was appointed by Tinubu to head the committee whose scope includes fiscal governance, tax reforms and growth facilitation.

Speaking further, Oyedele revealed that the nation’s fiscal governance covers issues ranging from debt limit to the ratio of deficit to Gross Domestic Product (as indicated in the Fiscal Responsibility Act), reporting revenue generation and the quality of spending.

He stated further that there’s a significant tax gap “estimated in the region of 20 trillion or even more.”

Oyedele noted that a lot of people within the tax net, especially the middle class and the elite, aren’t compliant with tax regulations, adding that “some of them are in the tax net with one or two fingers. In fact, our plan is to repeal many of the taxes that currently make doing business difficult without introducing new ones, and yet collect more.”

Oyedele stated that Nigeria’s revenue generated via tax is one of the lowest in the world.

He advised that, for the nation’s economy to benefit from revenue generation, the collection of revenue should be assigned primarily to the Federal Inland Revenue Service, while reducing the revenue generation burden on the Federal Government’s Ministries, Departments, and Agencies.

The committee chair said, “At the Federal Government level alone, we had 63 MDAs that were given revenue targets in the 2023 budget,” adding that “these agencies are being distracted from their primary function which is to facilitate the economy.”

He also noted that the revenue collection in such agencies will be inefficient, as “they were not set up to  collect revenue.”

Oyedele disclosed that the committee will be “very intentional’ in looking at the detail, while also creating a million jobs in the digital economy.

Furthermore, he said the one-year timeframe was set up “purposefully,” with one year for the implementation of its policies.

He noted that the 30 days, six months and one-year periods run concurrently.

He stated that “every state should just have one law that covers everything collectible by local government and the state government.”

He also called for the transparency of such laws by relevant authorities.