A member of the house of representatives, Fakeye Olufemi has stated that owners of small and medium-sized enterprises including carpenters and taxi drivers should be made to pay tax.
This statement was made by Olufemi, a member representing Boluwaduro/Ifedayo/Ila federal constituency of Osun state under the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) while speaking on the floor of the house on Wednesday.
The finance act 2020 exempt small companies with an annual turnover of not more than N25 million from paying company income tax (CIT).
Fakeye while contributing to the 2022 budget debate during the plenary session, said this will enable the federal government to boost its revenue generation.
“Why I salute the honourable speaker and my colleagues herein seated and even the senate for complying with the request by the executive that we reset the button to a January to December cycle for budget making; I think it is fair to expect that if we do that — which we have done, there should be a properly timed implementation of the budget. I know it is easy to talk, it is more difficult to implement,” he said.
“I like to tell the executive; if you are going to borrow to implement the project for a year — they should be borrowing January, February and March not borrowing or trying to arrange the borrowing in the third or fourth quarter of the year for which you want to implement.
“I’m aware right now and it has been said here that only two quarterly releases have been made now — we are in the last quarter of the year. That makes a joke of all the effort that we put in day in, day out to ensure that the budget is passed in time.
“And I pay attention to revenue shortfall for the government and I begin to ask myself and I recall when I was young, everybody pays taxes. Whether you are a farmer, your daddy was a carpenter, whatever he did for a living, he paid tax.
“Now we have tended to forgive everybody their taxation except those who have an income where the tax is taken out of your income and the rest paid to you.