{"id":3057,"date":"2023-01-18T14:52:20","date_gmt":"2023-01-18T14:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/?p=3057"},"modified":"2023-01-18T14:52:23","modified_gmt":"2023-01-18T14:52:23","slug":"assent-to-finance-bill-delayed-as-president-signs-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/assent-to-finance-bill-delayed-as-president-signs-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Assent to Finance Bill Delayed as President Signs Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>On December 28, 2022, the National Assembly passed Nigeria\u2019s 2023 Budget and the Finance Bill. While the President assented to the budget, the National Assembly transmitted the Finance Bill to the President on 3<sup>rd<\/sup> January 2023 for his assent. This bill is yet to receive assent. The Finance Bill is a major plank for determining the extent of government revenues for the fiscal year, as it amends provisions of various finance-related laws. The current Finance Bill contains provisions amending 11 existing Acts. These include the Capital Gains Tax Act, the Companies Income Tax Act, the Customs, Excise, Tariff, etc (Consolidation) Act, the Federal Inland Revenue Service Establishment Act, Personal Income Tax Act, Petroleum Profit Tax Act, Stamp Duties Act, Value Added Tax Act, Tertiary Education Tax Trust Fund Act, Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Act and the Public Procurement Act. Some of the notable amendments are discussed below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Finance\nBill amends the Tertiary Education Tax Trust Fund Act, to increase the tertiary\neducation tax from 2.5% to 3% of the assessable profits of all companies\nregistered in Nigeria each year. However, the Academic Staff Union of\nUniversities (ASUU) is demanding an increase of Education tax to 10%, to\naddress the infrastructure deficit in tertiary education institutions. It will\nbe recalled that the 2021 Finance Act increased the rate of education tax from\n2% to 2.5%. According to experts in the private enterprise industry, this is\nanother increase too soon, in addition to multiple taxes and levies that\ncompanies are faced with. They are also of the opinion that improvements in\nterms of taxation should focus on widening the tax base, efficiency in tax\ngovernance and administration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 2023 Finance\nBill also amends the Federal Inland Revenue Service Establishment Act to change\nthe name of the Service to \u2018Federation Revenue Service\u2019. Additionally, it\nprovides a new section 3 and 9 on the establishment and composition of a\nGoverning Board and Technical Committee of the Board, respectively for the\nService. The Finance Act also amends several sections of the Federal Inland\nRevenue Service Establishment Act to change the term \u2018Executive Secretary\u2019 to \u2018Commissioner\nGeneral\u2019 of the Service. This is also reflected in the new section 11 of the\nAct which provides for the Commissioner General of the Service and the\ninsertion of a section 11A which provides for Commissioners of the Service. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Several\nsections of the Petroleum Profit Tax Act are amended by the Finance Bill, such\nas the Interpretation section, which describes the word \u2018Commission\u2019 to mean\nthe Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, established under the\nPetroleum Industry Act, 2021. It also provides a new section 51 which provides\na penalty for violation of any provisions of the Act, for which no penalty is\nspecifically provided. Other amendments are contained in section 10 of the Act\nthat deals with Deductions, section 23 that deals with Additional Chargeable\nTax payable in certain circumstances, section 30 on Preparation and Delivery of\nAccounts and Particulars, section 52 which stipulates the penalty for making\nincorrect accounts, among others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 2023\nFinance Bill has some controversial provisions as mentioned above, including\nthe provision escalating taxes by companies in a period when companies are\nreeling from the pains of a declining economy. Most have criticised this\nadditional burden as insensitive or even unrealistic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Given that the\nFinance Bill defines the extent of government revenue for its budget, it is\nunclear why the President has delayed signing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On December 28, 2022, the National Assembly passed Nigeria\u2019s 2023 Budget and the Finance Bill. While the President assented to the budget, the National Assembly transmitted the Finance Bill to the President on 3rd January 2023 for his assent. This bill is yet to receive assent. The Finance Bill is a major plank for determining [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3062,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3057\/revisions\/3062"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}