FIRS proposes law on road tax across 36 states, FCT
Proposal has been sent to the federal government for the introduction of a law on road tax by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS).

Executive Chairman, FIRS, Mohammed Nami, disclosed this at an interactive session organised by the House of Representatives’ Committee on Finance on the 2022-2024 medium term expenditure framework/fiscal strategy paper (MTEF/FSP) for ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) in Abuja.

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Nami noted that the introduction of road tax is one of the measures that FIRS is working on to ensure that the informal sector pays tax to the federal government.

There was however no indication as to how the proposed law will play out against the background of a new policy for toll gates across the country recently approved by the federal government.

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The FIRS boss said that when the framework on the proposed road tax is finalised, the legislation would be sent to the National Assembly.

Nami stated: “Road tax is necessary because all over the world there is no way we would see people that will use roads for free.

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“As is it today, even if you are able to give an entire N10 trillion to the Federal Republic of Nigeria, it will not be able to fix the roads in Nigeria, just the roads in Nigeria alone.

“So what we have decided to do is to propose the introduction of road taxes to the federal government through our special tax operations department so that at least 50 trucks that would be plying these roads for free at any given point in time, comes across a toll gate or probably somewhere that we are going to use electronic device to collect it without necessarily erecting toll gate.

“We are aware that the owners of these trucks, they don’t pay anything to the government, they don’t get the FIRS certificate. So, up to 15 or 20 trucks that will ply the road that is built with personal income tax that I pay and you pay and then they don’t pay taxes. That is what we want to identify.”

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