The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, has said that the Nigerian government is set to start taxing first class and business class air tickets in the country along with other luxury goods.
The Finance Minister while addressing questions from Nigerians on Thursday morning via Facebook stated that she approves of the move by the federal government to tax the luxury air travel.
Addressing the question, the finance minister said, “I think yes.”
She added: “We’ve signed something that will bill access charge on first class and business class tickets, we are just doing the final parts of the implementation and we also want to try and amend the tax payer book on high end cars, luxury cars.”
Adeosun further added that the taxes imposed will be used to better the lot of Nigerians in terms of infrastructure adding that it will be used in remodeling the country and returning it to the great standard which the nation is known for.
She added during the interview, “If we move our tax-to-GDP ratio up, it means two things: One, we will be able to provide more services to our people. Many of the things we are not able to do are function of the fact that we don’t have enough money.
“We need to build more schools, hospitals and roads. This is not rocket science. Every country has challenges, there is nothing we are facing that other countries haven’t faced.
“Every poor nation has very poor tax compliance rate and every rich nation has high compliance rate. So we want to be a properous nation. So what is in it for the citizens?
“If everybody pays, there will be far more money in the pool to be spent on the services that we need. These things are what we call public goods, and they’re funded from taxes.
“If you have been all around the country, you’ve seen the need, you’ve seen the number of people that are living in poverty, we can lift people from poverty if we have the right money.
“A lot of people that are very successful today went to public schools because the public schools were good; we can recreate that. Same with health system.
“A lot of people die needlessly because we don’t have the right health facilities.” The minister says Nigerians living and working abroad, and paying taxes in those countries do not have to pay taxes in Nigeria.”