An assessment of tax reliefs and economic development in Nigeria

The mission of any government is the maximization of the social welfare of its citizens. In achieving this, government provides certain amenities to the citizens such as good roads, sound health, education, law and order. The provision of these are found to be cash consuming which the government may not be able to meet on its own without imposing compulsory levy on the citizens. Therefore, in as much as the imposition of tax is inevitable, some measures are put in place by the government to reduce the burden of tax on taxpayers. This is aimed at providing the tax payers with a sufficient disposable income which its resultant effect is the improvement of standard of living of the citizenry. For the purpose of the study, four private universities in Nigeria were purposively selected out of 34 licensed private universities in Nigeria. Questionnaires were administered to thirty lecturers in each of those four selected private universities which gave a total of 120 respondents. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data collected and Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to test the hypotheses formulated. The result of the analysis showed that, though, there are tax reliefs provisions for the reduction of tax liability, the reliefs system in Nigeria is not efficient and adequate to improve the standard of living