Description
ABSTRACT
A Tax System of Many Colours that Our Country has Made for Us
Professor Taofeeq Abdulrazaq*
INTRODUCTION
Nigeria, our country, has a tax system of many colours and three issues call for a discussion. The first issue is the absence of functional Tax Appeal Tribunals. The second is the remedy or remedies available to an aggrieved tax payer including suggested solutions and the third is a discussion around the validity and legal issues on the implementation of the Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS) or tax amnesty as it is being called.
The title of this write-up is an adaptation of the song “Coat of Many Colours” by Dolly Parton, the American country musician. In an adaptation of it, I dare say
Back through the years of tax academics and practice. I go wondering once again
Back to the seasons of my youth at the London School of Economics and Political Science
(LSE) and the Ahmadu Bello University. I recall the box of tax law that our lecturers and
Professors gave us.
And how we put the tax law knowledge to use.
There were taxes of many colours that our country made for us
There should be no confusion as to the intention of this write-up. It is simply to put tax law issues on the table for further discussions. The intention is well captured in the song “Awa ki se olodi won” by the Apala music genius, Ayinla Omowura, that there are no opponents in this discourse.
ISSUES
Non-composition of the Tax Appeal Tribunals
The first issue, is the non-composition of the Tax Appeal Tribunals since the expiration of the term of the members of the tribunal in 2016. A Tax Appeal Commissioner shall hold office for a term of three years, renewable for another term of three years only and no more under paragraph 4 of the 5th Schedule of the Federal Inland Revenue (Establishment) Act. The Act further provides in paragraphs 1, 2 and 7 of the 5th Schedule for the establishment of Tax Appeal Tribunals, composition and filling up of vacancies by the Minister of Finance. We have no public information why the vacancies have not been filled. Questions are regularly asked why the Minister of Finance should be the appointing authority when the Minister is an interested party in the collection of taxes? Perhaps,
to maintain independence of the tribunals the appointing body should be the National Judicial Council. The difficulty of this suggestion is that Tax Appeal Tribunals are more of an administrative body than a judicial one as decided in Adesina v Federal Board of Inland Revenue.1
Other Judicial Remedies Available to a Tax Payer
The second issue, is that in view of the lack of composition and filling of vacancies in the Tax Appeal Tribunals what other avenues are available to the aggrieved taxpayer? A major avenue is judicial review, where the tax authority can be shown to have acted unlawfully or ultra vires or where they have not acted properly or acted with procedural impropriety or have not acted proportionately or
* LL.B (ABU), LL.M (LSE), Ph.D. (ABU), BL, FCIB (UK), FCTI, TEP (UK). Professor of Taxation, Faculty of Law, Lagos State University and former Registrar/Chief Executive, Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria.
- (1992) 1 NTC360 at 364.
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