The Presidency has denied claims that there were problems with the recently signed tax reform laws. They said the documents shared in the media were not real.This response came after a member of the House of Representatives, Abdulsamad Dasuki, claimed that the versions of the tax laws published and made public were different from the ones approved by the National Assembly.
Dasuki said his rights as a lawmaker were not respected. Because of this claim, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate Peter Obi, and some civil society groups asked the government to stop carrying out the laws.
However, on Channels Television’s Morning Brief on Monday, Taiwo Oyedele, the Chairman of the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms Committee, said the documents in the media were not genuine. Oyedele explained that there was no reason to compare the laws passed by the National Assembly with the ones published because the officially approved versions, which were certified by the Clerk of the National Assembly and sent to the President, had not been made public. He said only lawmakers could say for sure what was given to the President. He added that even members of the tax reform committee didn’t have access to the certified versions.
He said,
“Before you can say there is a difference between what was gazetted and what was passed, we don’t have what has not been gazetted. We don’t have what was passed.” “The official harmonised bills certified by the clerk, which the National Assembly sent to the President, we don’t have a copy to compare. Only the lawmakers can say authoritatively what we sent. “It should be the House of Representatives or Senate version. It should be the harmonised version certified by the clerk. Even me, I cannot say that I have it. I only have what was presented to Mr President to sign,” Oyedele said.
According to him, the House of Representatives committee told him they had not met on the matter and that the document in circulation did not come from them.He asked the public to let the House of Representatives investigate the matter. Earlier, President Bola Tinubu had signed four tax reform bills into law.