In my country, there is no way you can escape from paying taxes, and if you think you are not paying, then don’t bother buying anything in the supermarket or getting involved with anything that has to do with government; if not, you will pay all the ones you are supposed to have paid, and that is how bad paying tax is in my country.
A fish seller will tell you, I don’t work in an office, so I don’t have business with paying taxes, but whenever they go to the cold room to buy fish, they always pay tax without them knowing, simply because the people running the cold room would have paid, and of course it will be added to the price of the fish, which is unknown to the fish sellers.
Everyone in my country is paying tax, but still my country remains the same. We didn’t know what the money was being used for or where it was going, but when you asked, their answer was that they were using it for country development, which doesn’t reach down here.
Well, where I have stayed so far, I didn’t see anything that the government is doing with the taxes they are collecting from people. They are only upgrading the places where people like me and some others can’t reach or have access to.
All we see is rebuilding Victoria Island, Lagos, and of course, those places are not for people like me. General hospitals are supposed to be a place where taxes that are being collected should be used for, but this same general hospital doesn’t take any people. In fact, the one in my area will refer you to a bigger place inside Lagos where you won’t be able to afford the treatment, and if you ask, they will tell you they don’t have equipment, and the government is showing us that every general hospital is being equipped with people’s taxes.
The government is showing us on the television that taxes are being used for this same general hospital, roads, water, and electricity project. These same facilities are the main thing we are lacking as a citizen, and yet nobody can escape paying tax.
When I was working in a factory, every month they deducted our money for tax, and yet there was no stable electricity, the community water had broken down, and even before it broke, you were to pay before fetching water from the government tap.
Well, let’s just say the government is trying hard by making sure everyone is paying tax, but what they are using the money for is not enough because both rich and poor are supposed to have rights to what the taxes are being used for, so for that reason, I believe they can do better by making sure the development they are doing is not for rich people only but for everyone.
Rome was not built in a day is what I used to hear, and that made me believe that what the taxes are being used for can still circulate and reach people down here since people can’t have access to those bigger places.