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The Federal Government on Wednesday announced that Value Added Tax (VAT) will be increased this year.

Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, at the unveiling of government’s Strategic Revenue Growth Initiatives in Abuja, said the initiative was to boost accruals into government’s coffers and to sustain revenue generation in all sectors.

She said:

“We are studying a possibility of a VAT increase but you also know that the increase of VAT requires an amendment of a law. It is most likely the VAT increase will be selective. It will be on special items so it won’t be across the board.

“There would be a VAT increase during the course of 2019, we will announce later the items and what the rate would be. We would have to take a request to the National Assembly for amendment before it takes effect.

“President Muhammadu Buhari has mandated the Federal Ministry of Finance to generate more revenues to finance national development and to proactively monitor collections by all Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) involved in revenue generation.

“The government will also be looking at new revenue streams and enhanced enforcement with regard to revenue collection from our existing revenue streams.

“Through the initiative, we hope to achieve cohesion between revenue generating entities and equipping them with cutting-edge tools and expertise needed to support high performance.”

Speaking, Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Mr Babatunde Fowler, said the the parastatal will go ahead to collaborate with Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) “to get names of companies and individuals with funds in excess of N1 billion and make sure that appropriate tax is collected.”

noted.

I am of the opinion that more tax payers must be brought under the tax net first before the authority increase tax burden on the few tax payers