Northern Senators held a closed-door meeting on Thursday after the upper chamber moved the Tax Reform Bills to a second reading.
The meeting announced during the plenary, was held in room 301 and lasted about two hours.
The details of the discussion remained undisclosed, as Senator Abdulaziz Yar’Adua, Chairman of the Northern Senators Forum, declined to comment after the session.
The Bill was debated in the senate before it was passed for second reading.
The Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, said, “The bill has been passed for second reading, it will be now transmitted to the Committee for Public Hearing.
“In the course of the public hearing, Nigerians of all walks of life, of all groups, will come and aggregate, including the governors and traditional rulers, the Governors Forum are free to come and ventilate their opinion as to the pros and the cons of the bill.
“After the public hearing, our committee will now look at the various submissions aggregated and then bring it for clause-by-clause consideration.
“These bills are now referred to the Committee on Finance to be referred to the Senate in six weeks.”
The clause-by-clause consideration is done during the third reading of the bills where the bills are passed for the final time before being transmitted for concurrence and subsequently sent for presidential assent.
President Tinubu Bola transmitted the four tax reform bills to the National Assembly for consideration on October 3.
The bills are; the Nigeria Tax Bill 2024, which is expected to provide the fiscal framework for taxation in the country, and the Tax Administration Bill, which will provide a clear and concise legal framework for all taxes in the country and reduce disputes.
The others are; the Nigeria Revenue Service Establishment Bill, which will repeal the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) Act and establish the Nigeria Revenue Service, and the Joint Revenue Board Establishment Bill, which will create a tax tribunal and a tax ombudsman.
