…Says Nigeria’s Telecoms Industry Overtaxed
A new report by a socioeconomic research firm, SBM intelligence, has said that Lagos and Ogun are the only two states of 36 that fetched more Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) than the allocations received from the Federal Government in four years (2017-2020).
Titled, ” Taxing Nigeria’s subnational economies to oblivion”,the report warned that the current condition of the states’ Internally Generated Revenue is not healthy.
The report said by 2018, Osun State had fallen off the list, as 2019 witnessed a huge positive change as Lagos, Rivers, Ogun and Delta all generated more internal revenue than they were fed by Abuja.
“By 2020, we were back to just Lagos and Ogun generating more internal revenue received from Abuja.This state of affairs indicates that almost all of Nigeria’s federating units are not fiscally healthy”,it added .
The falling oil revenues,the report said, have put states in precarious situations, leaving them unable to meet their basic obligations such as paying salaries, wages and pensions not to mention providing social services and infrastructure
This,it stressed, has increased the urgency of states to increase their internally generated revenue in order to reduce their exposure to volatile and unreliable federal allocations.
It also said as a result of limited number of taxable businesses in the states, many state governments end up focusing their efforts on the same businesses that are already paying their fair share of taxes.
“In the end, this has the unintended effect of creating a harsh business environment for all and in some cases, forcing businesses to close due to overtaxation and/ or harassment,” it added.
Nigeria’s telecoms industry,it said, is disproportionately overtaxed by states, citing Kogi State, adding that the telecommunications companies are made to pay up to 41 levies by the state government, including levies.
According to the report,some of the levies are annual right of way renewal; social services contribution; employee economic development levy; mast site premises renewal; fire service yearly renewal; payment of environmental levy; failure to submit an environmental impact assessment report; failure to register industry; failure to submit environmental audit report every two years; storage of petroleum products and radioactive materials without written permission from the Kogi State Environmental Protection Board and others.
