Taiwo Oyedele, chairman of the presidential tax reform committee, says the issuance of guidelines for implementing the new tax laws has been delayed due to uncertainty over the final gazetted version.
Oyedele spoke in Lagos on Wednesday during the 2026 Economic
Outlook organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN).
The tax expert said he told the Nigeria Revenue Service
(NRS) and the Joint Revenue Board (JRB) to wait, explaining that guidelines for
implementing the tax laws cannot be issued until the final version is
concluded.
“Our plan in an ideal world was for all these regulations,
guidelines, public notices to be ready like three months before December
because we wanted people to give their feedback, debate it, finalise and
gazette,” he said.
“Well, in our real world, it did not happen like that. And
as I speak to you today, we have more than 40 regulations, guidelines and
public notices that have been finalised.
“But we can’t release a single one of them because we’re
still waiting for what is the final version of the gazette, because the Acts
Authentication Act says whatever the government printer publishes is the
evidence of the law that was passed.”
The tax expert said that although the government printer had
published the gazette, which had been shared with the public as the official
version, lawmakers argued that “it is not what they passed”.
As a result, Oyedele said the lawmakers agreed “they would
do their own gazettes”.
“They set up their committee, did their own review, (and)
they did their own gazettes. They sent me a soft copy. But that’s not what the
Acts Authentication Act says. So I sent my staff, go to the government printer
and buy,” he said.
“They went there. As of last week, they said it’s not ready,
that they should wait. So I also told everybody — the NRS and JRB — to wait,
because we can’t issue guidelines when we are not 100 percent certain that this
is the final official position.
“I called my staff this morning, I said go back there,
follow up every day. Go there, don’t call them, go and sit down there.”
However, Oyedele said he got feedback that after the copies
were printed, the government printer handed them over to the national assembly
after a directive that they should not be sold to anyone pending a review.
While “that is a good move,” the tax expert said “it also
creates uncertainty”.
He added that although there are claims that the tax laws
have been altered, the changes are “not even a lot”.
Oyedele said the alterations are a few items that should not
affect the “main thing that people need to know; nothing about the tax rate,
the tax body, and the filing deadline”.
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com