President Bola Tinubu’s administration says the Tax Reforms Bill, when passed, will make housing more affordable and available to Nigerians by reducing the tax burden on the construction and real estate sectors.

The chairman of the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Taiwo Oyedele, said this in Abuja on Thursday at a Building and Construction Industry Forum.

According to him, when the bill becomes law, value-added tax on real estate transactions will be exempted, thereby lowering the cost of building materials and houses.

“The bill is designed in a way to favour low-income earners contrary to what is being claimed, it will also ease their burden. There will be no VAT on lands, sale of real estate, and rent is exempted from VAT. Some of these are areas of controversies in the past.

“There is an exemption on stamp duties for rents below N10 million a month and capital gains tax is also exempted on the sale of dwelling houses,” he said.

Mr Oyedele added that building materials production, including non-metallic products, in the bill, are eligible for priority sector incentives to boost production.

He said reforms would be carried out on land transactions, including titling and harmonisation of property taxes.

“The Tax Reforms Bill will improve the affordability of housing. It will provide relief for people who are paying rent because what this bill is going to do is to remove a lot of the tax burden.

“The essence is to make life better for everybody and improve the economic activities in the building and construction sectors, and by extension, the whole of the economy,” he said.

Mr Oyedele encouraged Nigerians to seek more understanding of the tax reforms and stop relying on social media and headlines that were misinforming them.

(NAN)