Association decries multi taxation in telecom industry

Adede Williams, the National President, Association of Telecommunications Professionals of Nigeria, has urged the Federal Government to caution relevant agencies to address multiple taxation bedeviling the telecom sector.
Williams, who made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja on Thursday, said the issue of multi taxation in the industry had become “a serious problem”.
He said that operators had been crying out against multi taxation but government had not been able to address the issue instead “it is introducing more tax burdens on the industry’’.
Williams said: “There is the first level tax, which is the Federal Government, the state government tax and even the community where these base stations are built demand money.
“The truth of the matter is that government should begin to call the relevant agencies, the state and local government authorities to order and caution them on the incessant taxes.
“And make them understand that multi taxing will not do any good to the telecom industry instead all these taxes will go back to the subscribers.”
Williams said if operators were made to pay extra money through taxation and other uncalled for payments, the subscribers would bear the brunt.
He said that subscribers were already crying foul about high charges of telecom services and to continue with such taxes in 2017 would not augur well for the sector.
He said: “So that the operators can equally serve in the full capacity they need to serve the subscribers.”
He said that telecom operators were in recent times building more telecom sites, especially in the rural areas that lack infrastructures.
Williams blamed the lack of telecom services in some of the rural areas on cost of deployment borne by telecom operators.
He appealed to government to look into some of the challenges facing the operators to enable them heave a sigh of relief.
Williams stated: “If this is no, the network will become more robust and complains of network failure would be reduced.”
The Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria had in 2016, appealed to the National Assembly to drop the proposed Communications Service Tax Bill.
The CST bill as presented sought to impose charges and collect communication service taxes and fees at nine per cent payable by users of electronic communication services.
ALTON led by its President, Gbenga Adebayo, had flayed the introduction, saying operators were already paying about 26 different forms of taxes and levies.
According to Adebayo, mobile operators pay taxes and levies including national and local taxes on revenues, businesses, business sites and regulatory fees such as spectrum and permits fees.