The Federal Republic of Nigeria's Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, confirmed at a press briefing in Lagos on Thursday that the Federal Government has engaged Kroll, a United Kingdom-based forensic and assets-tracing firm, and some other foreign firms to trace the assets of very wealthy Nigerians at home and abroad.
The 50 year-old U.K born Minister Kemi, however, refused to give the names of the other foreign firms the Federal Government had engaged for the exercise nor names of the wealthy Nigerians whose assets are being traced.
Adeosun said the objective of the exercise was to match the lifestyle of the wealthy individuals with the amount of tax they were paying to the Federal Government.
The names of 150 very wealthy Nigerians are on the list for the first batch of the exercise, which is expected to last for some months.
According to her, the government is building the profile of people to encourage them to pay the right taxes before wielding the big stick in terms of prosecution at the end of the nine-month window given for the payment of all outstanding taxes under the newly introduced Voluntary Asset and Income Declaration Scheme
She said, “How much we recover from their purses is not as important as getting people into the tax net and paying the right taxes. Majority of people who are paying taxes at the moment are the Pay As You Earn; most of the people whose taxes are being deducted at source. But the people who are evading taxes are either the people who own their businesses or the high net worth individuals.
“And ordinarily, they are supposed to pay the biggest share of the tax revenue. What is happening now is that the lower-end people are carrying more of the burden, which is unfair. Everybody has to carry their fair share according to their level of income. That is how progressive taxes work all over the world.
Remember that tax is one of the instruments the government uses to redistribute income; to take from the rich to support the poor. That is very fundamental. Not only do we recover money from the people, it (VAIDS) is meant to ensure that people pay the right taxes going forward.”
She added, “The firms that we are using to trace assets internationally are working alongside the projects that we have locally.
“And that project puts together records of property ownership, foreign exchange allocations, company ownership from the Corporate Affairs Commission, and even private jet registration so that we can build profiles of people so that we have an idea of how much tax should this person be paying according to his or her lifestyle.
“And then we compare it with how much tax they are actually paying, and that is giving us a lot of information that hopefully will encourage people to come forward to do the right thing.”
According to the minister, the Federal Government is looking at realising about $1bn from the VAIDS.
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