The Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal and Tax Reform, Taiwo Oyedele has disclosed that his committee has drafted entirely new versions of major tax laws in the country as most of the existing laws date back to the colonial era.

Oyedele who was a guest at a TV programme stated that his committee has submitted approximately ten tax reform bills to the National Assembly for constitutional amendments.

“As we speak, we have about five draft executive orders. We have a withholding tax regulation that has just been signed by the honourable minister. It’s currently with the Minister of Justice for formatting, gazetting and publishing. 

“We also have draft laws. For all our major tax laws, we’ve drafted brand new ones because we took the view that we shouldn’t be amending laws that date back to colonial masters. There is no need to try to amend those. We’ve drafted new ones. 

“We have sent about ten amended bills to the National Assembly for constitutional amendments because some of the issues we identified emanated from the constitution itself. We have done a lot of work,” Oyedele said.

He noted that some of the issues identified by the committee necessitated legislative amendments, not just executive orders. He, however, mentioned that there are about five executive drafts submitted to the President by the committee for his approval.

In an earlier statement, Oyedele said the federal government has approved a new withholding tax system that includes exemptions for farmers, producers, manufacturers, and others.

Oyedele made this disclosure in a statement on his X (formerly Twitter) noted that the withholding tax system which was introduced in 1997 served as an advance payment of income tax on specified transactions to grow the government’s revenue. 

“Withholding tax was introduced into the Nigeria tax system in 1977 to serve as an advance payment of income tax on specified transactions.”