The International Monetary Fund has once again identified the removal of tax exemptions by Nigeria as one of the many strategies to increase government revenues for increased spending on infrastructure and social safety net.
Would recall that The IMF had in 2017, advised the Federal Government to urgently revisit tax holidays and exemptions given to companies. It specifically urged Nigeria to implement a reform that would phase out tax holidays and exemptions which, it said, were eroding the Company Income Tax base.
Catherine Patillo, an assistant director, Fiscal Affairs department of the IMF at the launch of the Fiscal Monitor report at the ongoing spring meeting in Washington said: “You have seen the most recent IMF staff report on Nigeria which was emphasizing that with a constraining debt servicing as you know, the ratio of federal government interest payment to debt revenue is extremely high at 63 percent, so there is a need to build revenue so that you have more space to spend for infrastructure, social safety nets etc otherwise interest is eating up most of your revenue so building revenue is key and how do you do that?
