By: Felix Ikpotor
Some stakeholders in Rivers State have expressed fear as the government fine tunes efforts to introducing new tax laws in the state.
They expressed their fear on Friday, during a public hearing held at the Rivers State House of Assembly, RVHA, complex on two tax bills.
The bills are the Rivers State Hotel Occupation and Restaurant Consumption Bill, 2016 and the Rivers State Taxes and Levies (Miscellaneous) Bill, 2016.
Speaking at the hearing, state chairman of Civil Liberties Organisation, CLO, Prince Sotonye George said the bills amounts to double taxation as citizens would be required to pay additional tax any item consumed in a hotel, bar or restaurant coupled with the five percent Value Added Tax, VAT they are already paying.
He maintained that the bill if passed into law would kill businesses in the state and destroy the micro economy of the state as the tax burden would be too much on them and warning that the assembly should not pass a law that would pitch the people against the government.
While urging the house to jettison the bills, he advised government to come up with a unified tax for all citizens and businesses to pay instead of different agencies of government imposing and collecting the same taxes from the people.
In the same vein, representative of the Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Laws, IHHL, Nsirimovu Courage said the government should discard the bills as it aims to further task residents of the state despite the many economic hardship facing the people, adding that it also amounts to double taxation.
While maintain that the laws are unjust and unfriendly considering the present times, the rights activists urged the state government to look for ways of empowering the people and creating more jobs instead of imposing more taxes on the citizens.
Speaking on behalf of the Port Harcourt Chambers of Commerce Mines and Agriculture, PHACCIMA, Clement Akanimor expressed the fear that multiple taxation would further force businesses out of the state and portray the state as investment unfriendly.
Some sections of the law stipulates that customers would have to pay five percent tax on anything consumed in a restaurant, hotel, bars etc.
However, co-chairman of the Joint House Committees on Finance, Public Accounts and Commerce and Industry, Edison Ehie allayed the fears expressed by the stakeholders.
He explained that the bills before the house are all in accordance with the constitution and operational in states like Lagos, adding that the state is only domesticating them.
Ehie who is representing Ahoada East Constituency 2 in the house said further that considering the dwindling economy of the government, there is need for the government to generate more revenue to be able to provide the dividends of democracy to people of the state but said the assembly would not pass any law that would further impoverished the people.
