Legal Solutions to The Dilemmas in Enforcing Income Tax Regimes in Nigeria

Abstract

Taxation for any society, including Nigeria, is an indispensable means of economic development. Developing countries can attain economic development through marshalling internal resources by enforcing tax policy constructively. Nevertheless, there is hardly a voluntary yield to each call for tax payment either by the individual or a corporate organization. Piqued by the dilemma of involuntariness in income tax extraction or payments, this research embarked on the doctrinal investigation of the Law (statutory and and others) to understanding the amplitudes of easing such dilemmas. This paper contends that Nigerian income tax systems are principally meant to fund government projects and expenditures rather than instruments for socio-economic improvements. This realization breeds not only distrust as between the taxpayers and the tax collectors, but discourages the voluntariness in disclosures of taxable incomes and distortions in real collections and related statistical records There are number of other reasons discovered by the research as impediments to efficacious income tax regimes in Nigeria. Some of these are lack of adequate logistics, undue political interference, slow judicial process, bribery and corruption, unskilled, poorly motivated staff, and sheer ignorance. The Paper provided suggested changes in legal and non-legal approaches, especially with respect to socio political and fiscal policies over which the tax-payers’ monies were to be applied. The paper concludes that trust in tax authority would increase if there is internal and external institutional integrity, thereby minimizing tax payment defiance in the country.