As the Communication Tax Bill passes first reading a the National Assembly, the chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Babatunde Fowler, has said that there is nothing wrong in introducing the tax.
The Cable reports that Fowler said this on Monday in Abuja. According to him, “I will put it in this way, Nigerians talk a lot on the phone; they even talk more than is required so for them to have capacity or revenue to talk that much, I don’t see any harm in paying a little bit more to government.
We compare ourselves to developing countries but Ghana introduced a 2% education tax and used it to fund their universities and that is why Nigerians are now going to University in Ghana. They didn’t look for aid, they did it by themselves”.
The Communication Service Tax Bill provides that the rate of the tax is 9% of the charge for the use of the communication service. It’d replace the 2.2% proposed increase in value added tax being proposed by the Federal Executive Council (FEC).
