Zainab Ahmed, minister of finance, says owners of yachts and private jets will begin paying luxury items from 2019.
Addressing
a press conference in Abuja on Monday, the minister said excise duties
would be introduced in some areas while taxes would be reduced for small
and medium enterprises.
“We are exploring the way to increase
taxes as well as reduce taxes in some sectors. For Small and Medium
Enterprises, what will happen is to reduce taxes. But there are some
special taxes that we will be looking at imposing,” she said.
“For
example, luxury taxes. If you have a private jet, we will be taxing you
specially for that. If you have a yacht, we will be charging you for
that and also in terms of excise duties, there are also some new areas
where excise duties will be introduced.
“We haven’t got all the approvals but one of the major areas might be that of carbonated drinks produced in the country.”
According
to Ahmed, the Whistleblower Unit has recovered over N8.5 billion and
$465 million among others from the 1,051 investigations conducted from
tips received.
“Based on verification outcome by the Presidential
Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA), we have also paid over 2,000
former workers of our defunct national carrier- Nigeria Airways
Limited,” she said.
Patience Oniha, director general of the Debt
Management Office; Mary Uduk, acting director general of the Securities
and Exchange Commission (SEC), Babatunde Fowler, executive chairman of
the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) were also present at the
briefing to give an account of the activities of their agencies.
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