The manufacturing sector has remitted at least N900.8bn in Company Income Tax and Value Added Tax in the first nine months of 2023, findings by The PUNCH reveal.
This is according to CIT and VAT quarterly reports published by the National Bureau of Statistics.
In the first quarter of 2023, manufacturers paid N62.9bn as CIT, while N129.2bn was paid as VAT.
In the second quarter, the VAT paid by manufacturers increased by 17 per cent to N151.7bn, while CIT increased to N262.7bn.
In the third quarter of the year, the sector paid N138.3bn in VAT while manufacturing firms remitted the sum of N155.7bn to the Federal Government as CIT.
This meant that manufacturers paid the sum of N419bn in VAT and N481bn in CIT, totalling N900.8bn in the first nine months of the year.
Further analysis showed that the manufacturing sector was the most heavily taxed during the reviewed period, followed closely by the Financial Services and Information Communication Technology sectors.
In recent years, the Manufacturer Association of Nigeria have at different fora appealed to the government to look into the issue of multiple taxes that had weighed heavily on its members.
According to the association, manufacturers pay over 30 different taxes, levies and fees to agencies of the federal, state and local governments.
In the special focus section of its Manufacturers CEOs Confidence Index, MAN said the manufacturing sector, which had always been at the receiving end had not felt any significant impact of debt finance on the numerous challenges that had bedevilled its performance in many years.
The report read in part, “Infrastructure decadence, forex scarcity, credit crunch and naira depreciation have become bones in the throats of MAN members despite the humongous increase of over 410 per cent in the country’s debt profile in the last eight years.
SOURCE: PUNCHNG
