Tax Administration in Nigeria

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Tax administration in Nigeria involves the application of practical interpretation of the Tax Laws. It seeks to ensure that each tax payer covered by the law pays the correct amount of tax as stipulated in the provision of the law. It is adequate to consider the Nigerian tax regime as it contributes a significant portion of Nigeria’s revenue and consequently its wealth. Tax collection is indeed a big business and it needs to be well administered to face the challenges ahead.

This research work has come at a time when the Nigerian Government is desperately striving for an expanded revenue base to meet the responsibilities that should be provided for the citizen such as education, good health, good communication system and other humanitarian services to accelerate all round suitable development. It could be observed that taxation, which forms a major point of government revenue from which those services are financed, is highly essential.

In Nigeria, there are various types of tax such as Companies Income Tax (CIT), Personal Income Tax (PIT), Value Added Tax (VAT), and Petroleum Profit Tax (PPT), just to mention a few.

Despite the diversity of taxation revenue source, it has been observed that income accruing to the government from these sources especially Companies Income Tax and Personal Income Tax has not been encouraging, this low revenue yield has been attributed to poor and ineffective tax administration.

This among other problems is the main focus of this research work. Efforts are therefore made to analyze critically the current Personal Income Tax (PIT) and Company Income Tax (CIT) administration in Nigeria.

Companies Income Tax (CIT) and Personal Income Tax (PIT) are backed up legally and the various legislations show that they must involve some calculations and figures so as to know how much is really realized from these Taxes....