For correspondence:-
Received: 12 Oct 2017 Accepted: 12 Dec 2017 Published: 31 Dec 2017
Citation: MULTIPLE TAXATION, FEES, LEVIES AND THE PERFORMANCE OF BUSINESS ENTERPRISES IN EDO STATE. Account Tax Rev 2002; 1(1):141-157 doi:
© 2002 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..
Abstract
This study examines the existence and types of multiple taxes, fees and levies that business enterprises pay in Edo State, their duplication across local government areas and impact on the performance of business enterprises in the State. The study also verified the extent to which these business enterprises perceived these taxes, fees and levies as legal. The data for the study was collected from four contiguous local government areas of Edo State (Oredo, Ikpoba Okha, Egor and Ovia North East Local Government Areas), using a sample size of 150 that was obtained from a random population of 240 registered businesses across the four local government areas of Edo State. Research instrument of structured questionnaire, which included five-point Likert- type questions, was used to elicit relevant data from the respondents with the aid of eight research assistants. A pilot study was carried with a pretest survey on 10 respondents whose business activities transverse three local government areas on a daily basis. The findings reveal that there are not only multiple taxes, fees and levies that are collected by the three-tier of government in Edo State, but some of these fees and levies are also duplicated on a daily basis across local government areas in the State. The multiple taxes, fees and levies affect the financial performance of these business enterprises by reducing their overall profit margin in addition to the disruption of business activities, lock-up of store and litigation by tax agents. The findings also revealed that a majority of business enterprises perceived these multiple taxes, fees and levies as illegal. In conclusion, it is recommended that the State government should lay more emphasis on tax enlightenment campaigns, streamline the tax process and set up a structure to eradicate all multiple taxes, fees and levies in the State. JEL Classification: M 00, M 19)
Fulltext in PDF