The Tax Burden

Nigerians continue to groan as the strangulating grip of the tax regime at all levels of government tightens. The reason for the tax regime by Those-in-Charge is obvious-more revenue-even as Those-in-Charge has decided to take additional loans to finance projects that fall under the category of misplaced priorities. However, during the Napoleonic wars, one of Those in Government in Britain, Pitt, resorted to an income tax to aid the defraying national expenditure. The burden of the war debt was humongous. £ 74,500,000 revenue was required annually to service the debt and other expenditures.

This was four times the pre-war budget, which resulted in the multiplication of taxes. During this period, government officials made excusable mistakes or were rather frankly ignorant. Indeed, smuggling and other sharp practices became prominent. There were taxes on the import of manufactured goods and taxes on the export of raw materials. There were also various revenue taxes on consumption whose range and number had gone beyond the roof tops due to the pressure from the Napoleonic wars. The article of Sydney Smith in The Edinburgh Review in 1820, summed up the precarious situation confronting Nigerian presently: ''Taxes upon every article which enters into the mouth or covers the back, or is placed under the foot-taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion-taxes on earth, and the waters under the earthy-on everything that comes from abroad or grown at home-taxes on the raw material-taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man-taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health.....''