The Effects of Pseudo-Taxation Politics on the Implementation of Tax Reform Policies: The Nigerian Experience
Taxation is a viable fiscal policy employed by government to attain economic stability and foster development. The world societal economies are under pressure to reduce poverty, create employment, maintain peace and foster development. With the government being the machinery through which all these could be accomplished, yet having insufficient fund to deliver these social services; there is need for the citizens to render financial support in proportion to their revenue to government, so that these obligations of the government will be rightly fulfilled. This is what taxation entails. However, there have been several cases of tax evasion, tax avoidance and complaints against Nigerian taxation system prompting the reformation of the Nigerian tax policies. In spite of these reforms, it seems the issue of tax evasion and avoidance is on the increase. Many previous literatures have studied the reasons for inefficiency of taxation system despite the tax policy reform, but not much has been said about how the influence of false taxation politics played by the politicoeconomic elites and tax revenue collectors affects the implementation of the tax reform policies. This paper attempts to fill this gap in literature by examining actions of revenue collectors and influence of the elites on tax reform policies. An analytical study on this was carried out and the findings indicate that strong-individual against strong-institution problem and tax collectors suboptimalization are what bedevil the implementation of the tax reform policies. This paper recommends institutional re-strengthening and tax collectors social re-engineering as a panacea to this problem.
