Interrogating the Impact of Voluntary Asset and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS) on Tax Administration in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper examined the impact of the Federal government of Nigeria’s tax amnesty programme tagged “Voluntary Asset and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS) on tax administration in Nigeria.  This task is premised on the global reality of governments facing challenges funding developmental projects and other government paraphernalia due to paucity of funds as a result of tax evasions and tax avoidances. In most developing countries such as Nigeria, this tax evasions and avoidances have serious repercussion on the economic growth and development strides of the nation. To avert this menace, the federal government of Nigeria in line with some other countries of the world, created a tax amnesty window called Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Schemes (VAIDS) to beat tax defaulters at their game and boost revenue generation towards generating the needed funds for developmental projects. For the purpose of this examination, data were generated through the secondary sources of data collection and analyzed with the content analysis. From the analysis, the paper found among others that VAIDS has impacted positively on revenue generation by expanding taxpayer’s data base and also enhanced the identification of tax defaulters. However, poor adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) and the inadequate publicity among others are the constraining factors to VAIDS achievement of its US$1bn target. Based on the findings, the paper recommends among others, proper institutionalization of ICT in data management for tax registration, assessment and collection processes and enforcing the penalties associated with not complying with VAIDS mercy window.