AN EVALUATION OF THE RULES OF PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE OF TAX APPEAL TRIBUNAL IN NIGERIA

AN EVALUATION OF THE RULES OF PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE OF TAX APPEAL TRIBUNAL IN NIGERIA

INTRODUCTION

The issue of taxation has often generated controversies between the tax authorities on one hand and the taxpayers on the other. These controversies or disputes generally stem from the very nature of tax itself and the peculiar way in which taxing Statutes are interpreted by the Courts. Taxes are levies imposed under the authority of the legislature and they are levied by a public body for public purposes.1 Tax is created by law and levied on individuals, incomes, commodities and transactions to yield public revenue that affords government the opportunity to offer protection and other socio – economic amenities to the citizens.2 It is one of the sources of income for government.3 Taxes are imposed by Statutes only.4 The issue of tax is consequently outside the ambit of common law. Therefore, for any individual to be chargeable to tax there must be a clear link between the charging provisions and the intended taxpayer. The link must be direct, not inferential.5 The insistence on the direct link between the charging provisions and the intended taxpayer has been a source of sustained controversies between the taxpayers and the tax authority.

The Nigerian tax system has a number of inherent challenges. The challenges range from the administration of the tax system itself, tax collection, assessments, apathy on the part of the citizenry, widespread corruption and absence of competent Tax Administrators.6 Another huge challenge is the objective of designing the tax system in such a manner that is acceptable to what Adam Smith in the „Wealth of Nations‟ called the „maxims of a good tax system.‟7 All of these have made tax disputes inevitable. It is for the purpose of achieving an effective, cheap and speedy system of resolving tax disputes that the Tax Appeal Tribunal was established under the Federal Inland Revenue Service (Establishment) Act, 2007.8 The FIRS (Establishment) Act also empowered the Minister of Finance to make rules of practice and procedure that will regulate proceedings before the Tax Appeal Tribunal.9 Pursuant to the powers enabling him in that behalf, the Former Minister of Finance, Mr. Olusegun Aganga made the Tax Appeal Tribunal (Procedure) Rules, 2010 on September 1, 2010. The “Tax Appeal Tribunal Rules are like the typical High Court Civil Procedure rules, which most common law jurisdictions are used to.”10 This work, therefore, appraises critically, and analyses the entire rules of practice and procedure of the Tax Appeal Tribunal with a view to explaining the process for tax dispute resolution in Nigeria.

TOPIC: AN EVALUATION OF THE RULES OF PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE OF TAX APPEAL TRIBUNAL IN NIGERIA

Chapters: 1 - 5
Delivery: Email

Number of Pages: 82

Price: 3000 NGN

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