The Chairman, Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Taiwo Oyedele has said that illicit funds in Nigeria such as laundered money or proceeds of crimes will also be taxed under the controversial tax reform bill.
Oyedele made the assertion when speaking on an X space hosted by Nairametrics in partnership with Business Day, BudgIT, and CODE.
He explained that the government will rely on data and intelligence reports to track illicit funds of Nigerians and tax them before probing the sources of such funds.
He said such tax will be collected through what he tagged a “voluntary disclosure programme”, in which people will declare the source of their funds whether legal or illegal.
“Yes, we have provisions (for illicit funds) in those bills. You have to pay tax regardless of the source of the income, and once we find that you have revenue, including from the international data we’re going to be receiving, and you can’t explain it, you have to pay the tax.
“But for people to be able to do that almost seamlessly, we plan to do a voluntary disclosure programme, where we give the people the opportunity to self-declare before we now come down on them because this time around there is going to be data and everybody will know it is not a joke,” he clarified.