TAX EVASION AND GOVERNMENT REVENUE IN NIGERIA

Tax evasion has significant impacts on government revenue in Nigeria, leading to reduced tax revenue and hindering economic development. Tax evasion practices involve misrepresenting income, inflating expenses, or concealing assets to reduce tax liability, as well as, exploiting legal loopholes and aggressive tax planning strategies. Many studies had been carried out on tax evasion but there seems to be dearth of literature on studies that combined the effect of tax evasion on both oil and non oil revenue. This study therefore investigated the effect of tax evasion on government revenue. The study adopted ex-post facto research design. The population of the study is the Nigerian economy made up of the public finance sector (1981 - 2022). Data were sourced from the CBN Statistical bulletin and World Development Indicator of 2022 publication. Descriptive and inferential statistics employing regression analysis were used for data analysis. The study concluded that tax evasion had significant effect on, Government oil revenue (Adj R2 =0.883, f-statistics = 312.1052, p = 0.00), Tax evasion had significant effect on , non-government oil revenue (Adj R2 = 0.688, f-statistics = 91.4530, p = 0.00), Tax evasion had significant effect on tax revenue (Adj R2 = 0.894, f-statistics = 348.4407, p = 0.00), Tax evasion had significant effect on Custom and excise duties (Adj R2 =0.816, f-statistics = 183.6488, p= 0.00). The study recommended that government should ensure that taxes are properly managed in a manner that will accelerate economic growth and reduce inflation rate in the country