Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has signed into law the State VAT Bill as passed by the House of Assembly. Gbenga Omotosho, Commissioner for information disclosed this in a statement on Friday in Ikeja.
“The Governor signed the ‘bill for a law to impose and charge VAT on certain goods and services’ at about 11.45am today, after returning from an official trip to Abuja. By this act, the Bill has now become a Law,” Omotoso said.
Recall that Lagos State House of Assembly had on Thursday unanimously passed the Value Added Tax bill, becoming the second state after Wike’s Rivers to sign the controversial law.
Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State had on Thursday signed into law the bill on Value-Added Tax (VAT) collection in the state after a court in Port Harcourt restrained FIRS from the collection of VAT and empowered the Rivers state government to take charge.
After the ruling, the Lagos state government began to domesticate a law to guide the collection of its VAT and warned FIRS to obey the Rivers ruling.
VAT collection by the Federal Inland Revenue System (FIRS) on behalf of the Nigerian government has been a subject of controversy.
In 2020, it was raised from 5 percent to 7.5 percent by the federal government.
The FIRS, which administers the tax, transfers the generated revenue to the three levels of government via the federation accounts allocation committee (FAAC).
