Direct Taxes
1 . Income Tax: This is the type of tax paid according to one’s income. Companies like human beings are legal beings. Corporations, therefore, pay taxes on their income. Personal taxes are paid on total wages, salaries, profits, interest and rent which a person receives with due allowances for family size, home ownership, insurance contribution and other factors. Company or Corporate Income Tax is paid only on corporate profit.
2 . Poll tax is imposed at a flat rate per head of population: It is a regressive tax because no matter the size of a person’s income, everyone has to pay the same amount. Nigeria has a poll tax for people with low incomes.
3 . Capital Tax: These are taxes imposed on property and other capital assets. For instance, when a person dies his assets are subject to capital tax, in this case the term death duty or estate duty is used.
4 . Capital Gains Tax: This is paid on property, when you buy a property and over time it rises in value, the amount by which it rises over what you paid is capital gain. The tax paid on this gain is called capital gains tax.
5.
Petroleum Profit Tax: In Nigeria, a tax is charged, assessed and payable upon the profits of each accounting period of any company engaged in petroleum operations during any such accounting period, usually one year.
Indirect Taxes
These are taxes levied upon persons or groups whom they are not intended to bear the burden or incidence,
but who will shift them to other people. They are normally levied on commodities or services hence their services does not fall directly on the final payers. Ability to pay here is assessed indirectly.
Examples of Indirect are:
Custom Duties – Import and Export duties
a) Import duties are levied on goods coming into the country from abroad.
b) Export Duties: These are taxes levied on goods which are exported or sold to other countries by the home country.
c) .Excise Duties: These are levied on certain goods produced or manufactured locally.
Value – added – Tax (VAT) – This belongs to the family of sales taxes. The valued – added tax is not a tax on the total value of the goods being sold but only on the value added (the difference between the value of factor services and materials that the firm purchases as inputs and the value of its output) the value that a firm adds by the virtue of its own activities to it by the last seller. Thus, the seller is liable to pay a tax on its gross value but net value, that is the gross value minus the value of the services and materials purchased from other firms, etc.
Sales Tax – These are taxes on selected sales transactions but applied at only one stage of business activity.
Stamp Duties: These are taxes on documentary evidence of particular transactions such as transfer or property loans, bonds, mortgages, debentures, bills of exchange, promissory notes, cheques bills of lading, letters of credit, policies of insurance, transfer of shares, proxies and receipts. It is evidence and not the transactions itself that are taxed.
Inheritance Tax – This is tax payable by the recipient or beneficiary of a deceased property.