The Nigeria government wants to enact the 2020 Finance Act to improve the implementation of its annual budgets, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, has said.
President Muhammadu Buhari is expected to send the 2020 Finance Bill to the National Assembly for enactment to the 2020 Finance Act soon. Mrs Ahmed said the proposed law seeks to amend various laws upon which the government’s fiscal policies are based.
The minister spoke on the Bill while addressing State House correspondents at the end of the weekly meeting of the Executive Council of the Federation in Abuja on Wednesday.
Ahmed said the Finance Bill was produced by several ministries, departments and agencies, tax practitioners and scholars working under the Fiscal Policy Reform Committee set up by the government.
Apart from proposing changes to tax laws relating to the Nigeria Customs and Excise and other fiscal laws, the minister said the Bill introduces new fiscal measures to enhance the management of the economy.
She said the Bill also seeks to reform the fiscal incentive policies to ensure coordination between the monetary and fiscal authorities of the government.
“The broad principle in the Finance Act was to consider how we will have adequate macroeconomic strategies to attract investments, to be able to grow the economy on a sustainable basis, and to create jobs as the immediate fiscal strategies to put in place accelerate domestic revenue mobilisation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent decline in the economy,” she said.
Mrs Ahmed said the Finance Bill seeks to amend 13 different tax laws.
These include the Capital Gains Tax Act, Companies Income Tax Act (CITA), Industrial Development (Income Tax Relief) Act (IIDITRA), Personal Income Tax Act (PITA), Tertiary Education Trust Fund Act, Customs & Excise Tariff (Consolidation) Act, Value Added Tax Act (VATA), Federal Inland Revenue Service (Establishment) Act, the Fiscal Responsibility Act and the Public Procurement Act.
Highlights of the Bill aside from the amendments to tax laws include providing fiscal reliefs for corporate taxpayers, for instance by reducing their minimum tax for two consecutive years.
The minister explained that the Bill reduced taxes from 30 per cent to 20 per cent for medium-term enterprises, and entirely cancels taxes for small or macro enterprises with a turnover of N25 million and below.
She said the 2020 Finance Bill also removes the two per cent education tax of the smallest businesses, who would also no longer pay company income tax.