Churches and Mosques To Pay Tax - FRC

                             

A early as January 2013, Churches and Mosques in Nigeria would begin reporting their financial transactions to the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), makng public the financial dealings of these religious institutions and exposing them to the long arms of taxation.

While presenting a keynote address at the 2012 Annual conference of the Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria (FICAN) in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, the Executive Secretary/CEO of FRC, Mr. Jim Osayande dropped the bombshell. He said churches, mosques and other not-for-profit organisations would be compelled to report their financial transactions periodically as from January 2013, and that this move was
to ensure that more Nigerians are dragged into the corporate tax net.

The Director, Corporate Communications, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had earlier said, "We want to release our Statement of Accounting Standards (SAS) 32 because we want churches and charities to begin to present accounts. They just file returns to the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and so long as they pay the N1000, they are home and dry. But we are saying that they must report their financial transactions in proper format.

"Also, once charity organisations engage in non-charity activities, they would have to submit those goods for taxable purposes. A country is not run by oil, but by tax. Go to the internet and you see all the branches of the Redeemed Christian Church in United Kingdom, you will see their accounts and over there, they fully disclose the amount collected as a church. But in our own, people are asking me: "Jim, do you want God to
render account."

So now the stage is set for religious organisations to pay tax. . . not very good. How will they determine what constitutes 'returns' from these religious bodies? Taking a church as a point of reference; we have different types of offerings being collected; some go to the pastors directly as 'gifts', while others are broken down into the different offerings based on Biblical injunctions, which then presents the problems highlighted above.

It's a very complicated issue, one which can't just be placed into a box. A lot of things are going to go down following this decision: Controversies, rebuttals, slanderings, name-calling. . .

I'm actually salivating right now.

Will the churchhes be compelled to remit what amounts to the sum total of returns?. . . (just giving them these technical names sounds strange to me), or will they just tax what comes directly to the pastors?

Will Oritsejafor's jet plane be taxed come 2013?

We watch, wait, and. . . . well, we just wait.