The Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to President Bola Tinubu, Bayo Onanuga, has said there was no need for the Muslim North to reject the Tax Reform Bill.
Bayo Onanuga said there was no section of the bill that proposed taxing family inheritance which is against Muslim injunctions.
In a post on his X handle Friday afternoon, he clarified that income and not inheritance was recommended to be taxed in the bill.
“For example, the question about if the bill is antithetical to Islamic injunctions. I have come across various write-ups by highly respected intellectuals and academics in northern Nigeria, erroneously referring to a section of the bill, giving the notion that the bill will charge tax on inheritance, after the reform is done.
“Those respectable scholars are making specific reference to chapter 2, part 1, section 4, sub-section 3 of the National Tax Bill; titled ‘Income, profits or gains chargeable to tax’.
“This section states and I quote; ‘Income of a family recognized under any law or custom in Nigeria as family income in which several interests of individual members of the family cannot be separately determined’.
“The section is clearly referenced in error, because the section is not speaking about inheritance, but about income,” he said.
Onanuga stated that in the entire bill, there is no “proposal to tamper or deduct tax from inheritance which is forbidden in Islam“.