The Federal Government on Wednesday clarified that the Tinubu administration’s ongoing tax reforms have not introduced any new taxes.
It argued that the new tax regime, most of which takes effect from January 2026, is intended to ease the economic burden on low- to mid-income earners and does not amount to new levies.
Prof. Taiwo Oyedele, Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, made the clarification during a workshop for media practitioners in Abuja on Wednesday.
Oyedele explained that recent tax measures, including the fuel surcharge and other levies, were not new but had existed in previous legislation. Addressing wider claims that the current administration had imposed multiple new taxes, Oyedele challenged critics to provide evidence.
“It’s not a new tax. Some said the tax is being proposed. The tax is not being proposed. Some believe this president has introduced tax after tax, and I challenge them to point to one newly introduced tax. We need to speak to facts.
“In July, just barely two months after getting into power, he [President Bola Tinubu] issued four executive orders, and those executive orders were suspending taxes. They were introduced toward the later days of the past administration, including excise on plastic and on the importation of vehicles.
“Many of us are not even aware because this president did not allow those taxes to take effect. They were suspended later. They were removed.
“Cyber Security Levy. The law was enacted years before now. This government did not introduce it. It was only being enacted,” Oyedele explained.
The Tinubu administration, which came into power in May 2023, has sought to overhaul Nigeria’s tax system to broaden the revenue base, reduce reliance on oil, and improve compliance.
Nigeria’s tax-to-GDP ratio, at around 10.8 per cent, remains one of the lowest in the world, well below the African average of 16 per cent and far short of the global benchmark of 30 percent.
Successive governments have struggled with ballooning debt service costs and falling oil receipts, prompting reforms aimed at the digitisation of tax collection, eliminating overlapping taxes, and streamlining revenue agencies.
The clarification comes amid public debate suggesting that the government was introducing new taxes as part of its fiscal reforms.
Created in July 2023, the Presidential Committee on Tax Reforms, led by Oyedele, has proposed consolidating multiple taxes and ensuring that levies are tied to transparent, project-linked spending.
International lenders, including the IMF and World Bank, have urged Nigeria to boost domestic revenue mobilisation as a path to sustainable growth.
However, the reforms have sparked anxiety among many Nigerians who warned against over-taxation amid the post-petrol subsidy rising cost of living and high inflation.
Oyedele argued that the government insists that rather than adding to Nigerians’ burdens, the reforms are focused on restructuring old levies, plugging leakages, and suspending harmful taxes imposed in the twilight of the previous administration.
He explained that the controversial 5 per cent fuel surcharge cited in recent media reports had existed in law for nearly two decades.
However, much of the recent debate around this is based on misinterpretation and misinformation, he insisted.
“So the Minister [of Finance] said yesterday (Tuesday) that the new tax laws will commence on January 1, 2026, but that the surcharge will not commence automatically with the tax reform laws. Because inside those tax reform laws, it has a provision that says, ‘this surcharge shall not commence.’
“The surcharge has always been in the FEMA Act. The Federal Road Maintenance Agency Act was amended in 2007, and the 5 per cent surcharge was included in that amendment. So it was a law that has been around with us for about 18 years.
“So that surcharge could have easily been implemented by FEMA without telling anybody, because the law is there, and they already took a step to do that. They went to the National Assembly, and I was invited to say this: we want to implement. And I said, ‘No, they can’t implement because it’s been removed from their law and it is now in the tax reform law,” Oyedele explained.
The Tax Reforms Chief expressed concern that inaccurate presentation of the facts had created unnecessary tension, stressing that the government was not imposing any additional burden.
“After attending that briefing where the Finance Minister said the surcharge will not commence on the first of January, I saw it being misinterpreted again. I said, ‘How is it even possible to interpret what the minister said in this particular manner?
“So I feel like sometimes we create a lot of unnecessary tension for ourselves. This surcharge is a universal practice. It is in more than 150 countries around the world,” Oyedele noted.
Providing macroeconomic context, he warned that the Nigerian economy was on the verge of collapse as of May 2023.
The country’s foreign reserves were heavily encumbered due to unpaid forward contracts and subsidy-induced debt by the NNPCL.
With barely 200,000 barrels of free crude available due to pre-sales, the system, he said, was “running on fumes.”
“People forget that we were paying for subsidies with borrowed money secured against future crude production. That model was unsustainable and would have led to the complete shutdown of fuel imports had the policy continued,” he said.
He cited Sri Lanka’s economic collapse as a cautionary example and defended the withdrawal of fuel subsidies as a necessary, albeit painful, reform.
“People may ask whether life is better now than it was two years ago. The right question is: would life have been better today if those reforms hadn’t happened?” he noted.
Oyedele clarified that the new tax regime actually favours low and middle-income Nigerians. The personal income tax thresholds, he explained, have been adjusted to ensure those earning less than N800,000 annually pay zero tax on that amount. Small businesses earning under N100m per year now enjoy a 0 per cent corporate tax rate.
“This reform is the most progressive Nigeria has ever seen,” he noted, adding, “It eliminates taxes on the poor, reduces burden on the middle class, and targets higher-income earners fairly.”
Meanwhile, the Federal Inland Revenue Service disclosed that Nigeria has successfully collected over N600bn in Value Added Tax from foreign digital companies such as Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix.
This was revealed by the Special Adviser on Tax Policy to the Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Mr. Mathew Osanekwu, at the workshop.
Osanekwu stated that recent updates to Nigeria’s VAT laws had empowered the country to bring non-resident digital service providers into the tax net.
Punch
