THE Nigerian government has explained that there will be no restrictions on bank accounts or financial transactions from January 1 2026 due to the non-availability of tax identification numbers (IDs).
The Joint Revenue Board made the clarification on Saturday in a statement signed by its Corporate Communications Department, noting that “no deductions will be made from any account on the basis of having a TAX ID or not.”
The clarification follows social media speculations that deductions will be made from the bank accounts of individuals without tax IDs from January. The social media accounts had also speculated that the government will deduct taxes directly from people’s bank accounts.
The Joint Revenue Board said that “tax ID will be automatically issued to every taxable person using NIN for indiividuals, and CAC registration number for businesses.”
The board said there was no cause for alarm or panic as “measures are being taken to ensure a seamles retrieval of Tax ID.”
Oyedele’s explanation
Earlier on Friday, Chairman of the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Mr Taiwo Oyedele, had assured Nigerians that nobody had a right to deduct taxes from their bank accounts, urging them to refrain from panic withdrawal from banks.
Speaking during a media workshop on the new tax law on Friday, Mr Oyedele said he was worried that social media accounts were ignorantly and deliberately misinforming Nigerians on tax deductions from their bank accounts, noting that it would never happen.
“Let me say this clearly, nobody – not FIRS, not CBN, not any government agency – has the power to debit your bank account. Whether you have N50,000 or N50 million, nobody is taking any money from your account. It is simply not true,” he said.
In June, President Bola Tinubu appended his signature on four tax bills: the Nigeria Tax Bill 2024, the Nigeria Tax Administration Bill 2024, the Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Bill 2024, and the Joint Revenue Board of Nigeria (Establishment) Bill 2024.
Spearheaded by Mr Oyedele, a lawyer and ex-tax expert at Pricewaterhousecoopers (Pwc), the tax reforms have been misunderstoood by many who believe that their incomes or earnings will be grossly reduced from January 2026.
The tax czar explained that there was only one way in which people’s money could be removed from their accounts: court-ordered garnishee, which means allowing a third party to deduct somene else’s money to settle a debt.
“Even in extreme cases where someone owes hundreds of millions and refuses to pay, the government cannot just wake up and remove money. They must assess you, notify you, allow objections, conclude the process, go to court, and get a judge’s order. Without that, nobody can touch your account,’ Mr Oyedele noted.
He said in three decades of tax administration in Nigeria, he had never seen a single instance where money was removed from an account “without due judicial process.”
Even under former Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) Chairman, Mr Babatunde Fowler, efforts to impose post-no-debit orders on accounts suspected of tax evasion failed.
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“That process didn’t succeed, and it created unnecessary panic. Nobody is repeating that mistake.”
The new tax law will see low-income earners benefit, Economy Post earlier reported. The law, which will take effect in January 2026, will see salary earners who receive N1.3 milliion annually or below exempted from paying income tax. In other words, if you earn N108,000 or below, your income will not be taxed. This move, analysts say, can help to encourage saving and investment in Africa’s most populous nation, My Oyedele earlier disclosed.
Hence more than one-thirds of workers in both the private and public sectors will be exempted completely from Pay As You Earn (PAYE), which “requires employers to deduct income tax—and in some cases the employee portion of social insurance benefit taxes—from each paycheck delivered to employees as a form of advance payment on taxes due,” according to Investopedia
