Some high networth individuals should be expecting letters in their mail boxes soon. And this is not the usual letter. It is a letter from the taxman. The letter is going to look strange because it is not a letter from the IRS in UK or US, it is a letter from the Federal Internal Revenue Service (FIRS) in Nigeria. According to the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, over 500 of such letters to Nigerians considered to have ‘perhaps’ under declared their tax obligation would start going out from yesterday.
Explaining the rational for the letters, the Minister explained that her ministry has reviewed the property and company ownership, as well as registration of high value assets and foreign exchange allocations of individuals in the country and found out that ‘people declared as little as N10 million as income but purchased expensive property overseas and in Nigeria, registered high specification vehicles and funded luxurious personal events costing multiples of the declared income.’
The Minister’s revelation is a wake-up call to Nigerians that the days of free lunch at the expense of government are fast coming to an end.
It is time to start doing the tax document as it is done in better organised countries of the world, where tax declaration is one of the most important things anyone would do in the year.
Tax compliance, for many Nigerians, is going to be a culture shock. But it is a transition that must happen if the country must move forward. Democracy is built on the basis of compliance with tax
regulations and it is therefore important that this initiative is taken with all the seriousness it deserves.
But then the culture shock of compliance is not going to be only with the ordinary Nigerian on the street. The government should also be ready to receive the culture shock of citizens who will rise to demand for more accountability in governance. The indulgence of office, such as the ‘long convoys’ will soon be challenged when government start sending the taxman out.
When people start paying their taxes, the natural expectation would be that they would demand that the government should show more accountability. And when this happens, the government should not
expect that it can quell that demand for accountability with force or it would risk unleashing a revolution. People would be forced to pay their taxes, whether they like it or not, but the government would also be forced to be more accountable or get thrown out.
