Tax Administration and the Crisis of Public Infrastructure Provision: Towards a Public Interest-Oriented Tax Policy Regime in Nigeria

As a compulsory payment exacted from the people for government use, tax proceeds are expected to manifest

basic social values for the citizens as well as representative as possible. The Nigerian context depicts

infinitesimal applicability of tax revenue to the provision of social services in Nigeria. This performance crisis

manifests in the absence of basic infrastructure, the tendency to evade tax payment and the impoverishment of

the Nigerian people. The paper therefore, addresses fundamentally the implication of non-applicability of tax

revenue to manifest social welfare concerns of citizens to show why tax evasion is common in Nigeria. It

assumes frankly that fiscal administrators have deliberately lost track of the primary mission of taxation owing

largely to personal interest, evidenced in corrupt practices. Obviously, we need therefore, to re align taxation to

its primary objective. The starting point, the paper suggests, is the evolution of tax policy regime that is

humanistic and grossly oriented towards providing social infrastructure for public benefit in Nigeria.

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