The Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) has said that Nigeria’s poor and low-income earners are the biggest beneficiaries of the new tax reforms introduced by President Bola Tinubu.
Speaking on Sunday during an interview on Arise Television, the Executive Chairman of the NRS, Zacchaeus Adedeji, said the reforms were deliberately designed to protect the poor rather than increase their financial burden.
Adedeji stressed that the new tax laws do not impose additional taxes on Nigerians, contrary to public fears, noting that extensive exemptions had been built into the framework.
“The government is not taxing more,” he said. “If you look at all the exemptions carefully, more than 95 per cent of poor Nigerians are totally exempted.”
The NRS chairman explained that the removal of Value Added Tax (VAT) on essential items such as food and transportation was a major relief targeted at low-income households.
“Removing VAT completely from food items is still to the advantage of the poor, because about 90 per cent of the disposable income of poor Nigerians goes into food,” Adedeji said.
He added that transportation costs, which also take a significant share of poor households’ earnings, were equally covered under the exemptions.
“The same thing applies to transportation, which the poor rely on heavily,” he noted.
Adedeji maintained that when the exemptions and reliefs are assessed holistically, the reforms clearly favour vulnerable Nigerians.
“So if you look at the total picture and the net benefit, the poor are the biggest beneficiaries of this tax reform,” he said.