Panelists at the Purple Book unveiling by the Policy Innovation Centre in Abuja have called for the deliberate inclusion of women, youth, and informal workers in Nigeria’s 2026 tax reform.
Focusing on the theme: “Who Gains, Who Pays? Centering Women, Youth, and Informal Workers in Nigeria’s 2026 Tax Reform” Patricia Chinwe Ofili-Ikpeazu of the Nigeria Revenue Service said, “Young entrepreneurs stand to benefit from reforms such as VAT credits, but raised the challenge of low awareness.
“Do they really even know what the VAT credit is? the answer is no,” she said.
She noted that without proper invoicing and documentation, many in the informal and youth-driven sectors risk exclusion from these benefits and spotlighted the advocacy effort of the Nigeria Revenue Service.
“We go out to plazas, a majority of them are in the informal sector, we educate them to keep proper documentation… without proper invoicing, there will be no VAT credit.
“We are no longer doing tax by enforcement, we are doing tax by partnership,” Ofili-Ikpeazu affirmed.
On whether the reforms are truly inclusive, Iniobong Usen of the International Budget Partnership stressed the need for systems that track who benefits, who bears the burden and the need to fund the Ombuds office.
“And so the Office of the Tax Ombuds, for it to be able to maintain that level of autonomy, independence, needs to be properly funded and this should translate into the number of cases that has been resolved, whether in favour of the taxpayer or not,” he said.
He warned that without disaggregated data, women’s contributions and burdens may remain invisible.
“Sometimes the data is gender-blind… and so when tax policy is being formulated… it doesn’t take into account the specific contribution on the needs of women.”
Addressing the burden side, Esther Ogugua of the Society of Women in Taxation highlighted how informal women workers disproportionately bear multiple levies.
“We have to understand that it’s basically bringing all the multiple taxes, levies, into a more single defined framework that can easily ensure that gender pattern enforcement is well coordinated as far as the informal sector is concerned, the women in the market, they face a lot of these multiple charges, multiple levies,” she said.
She explained that harmonisation and digitalisation would reduce arbitrary enforcement and ensure fairness in tax administration.
“When we are talking about this harmonisation, we’re not just only talking about making sure that this tax works, but also ensuring that everyone, especially the women, that is the major contributor, as far as these multiple levels are concerned, also benefit from what they are contributing, as far as the task budget is concerned.”
In closing, the moderator Femi Obidare steered consensus around shared responsibility across all levels of government.
The panel concluded that answering who gains and who pays requires not just policy reform, but inclusive implementation that visibly benefits women, youth and informal sector participants.