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Tax Evasion

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asionTHE SOCIO-ECONOMIC PROBLEM OF TAX AVOIDANCE AND EVASION IN NIGERIA: AN OVERVIEW Dominic Asada LL.B. (Hons.) B.L, LL.M. Tax Avoidance and Evasion are some of the most perplexing problems facing the nation today. It is widely believed that there is a considerable difference between estimated revenue from taxation every year and what is actually collected. This disturbing aversion to taxation has some historical antecedents. Traditionally, there has always been a hostile response to the payment of tax by the people who viewed tax collectors as a nuisance to the society. And for the few that paid tax, they did so with the greatest reluctance. Even in the Bible, instances abound where the Jews treated the tax collectors with disdain and …show more content…

Duke of Westminster, Lord Tomlin observed in respect of T ax Avoidance that: "Everyman is entitled, if he can to order his affairs so that the tax attaching under the appropriate Acts is less than it other wise would be. If he succeeds in ordering them so as to secure this result, then however in appropriate, the commissioner of Inland Revenue or his fellow tax payers may be of his ingenuity, he cannot be .compelled to pay an increased tax".8 Thus in spite of the generally held opinion that tax avoidance is unpatriotic and anti-social, it is clear that it is not a moral or legal issue unless the legislature expressly prohibits it. Tax Evasion on the other hand is the deliberate refusal or failure to pay one's tax or the reducti9n of ones tax liability through illegal or fraudulent returns or failure to make a return or pay tax on time.9 Implicit in the definition is that Tax Evasion apart from being a moral wrong also amounts to a breach of the tax law. Perhaps the distinction between Tax Avoidance and Evasion will be better understood and appreciated from the vivid illustration of the Royal Commission on "Taxation of profits and Income”.10 The Commission distinguished as follows: "The latter (that is evasion) denotes all those activities which are responsible for a person not paying the tax that the existing law charges upon his income. Exhypothesis, he is in the wrong, though his

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