Nigerian businessmen and industrialists should not to accept the illegality of multiple taxation and should continue to fight it with every means within the ambit of the law, the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Ms. Ifueko Omoigui has said.

Omoigui, who was a guest speaker at the Nigerian-South African Chamber of Commerce Breakfast meeting in Lagos, said multiple taxation was a very serious problem that had not received the necessary and desired attention and advised members to shift their focus from Value Added Tax (VAT) to the issue of multiple taxation.

She said going by the constitution, personal income tax is part of federal taxes, although state and local governments have continued to administer them."If we fail to address and fight this problem, then we are a part of the problem. We must all keep on fighting as long as we can through the law courts.
"What we read in papers everyday about tax is mainly on VAT. Multiple taxation should be given the necessary attention in the media too."

Nigeria, she said, is regarded as one of the countries with the most oppressive tax regimes and is reported to be the only country, out of the 56 member countries in the Commonwealth Association of Tax Administration (CATA), that runs a system of duplicative and multiple taxes. She enumerated some of the causes of multiple taxation to include seizure of LG funds by their state governments and poor growth of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR by states and LGs, among other.

Omoigui said revenue from most taxes and levies created at the state and local government levels were not useful to the people because they fall into wrong hands. "There is a difference between collection and the use to which the money collected is put to", she said. Chairman of the Chamber, Dr. Oba Otudeko condemned corruption in any segment of the society including tax administration and called for more enlightenment of the public on their rights.