Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said on Sunday the Federal Government has concluded plans to compel social media and digital firms to pay tax on profits made from Nigeria. Osinbajo, according to a statement signed by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity Laolu Akande, stated this during an interactive session with a delegation of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN) at his office in Abuja. Some of the social media and digital platforms currently operating in the country include Google, Facebook, and Twitter among others. The vice president, however, said the federal government has no plans to increase tax rates at this time but intend to utilise the legal provisions of the Finance Act 2019 to receive taxes from the tech firms. The statement read: “While social media and technology businesses are not founded in Nigeria, they have a substantial economic footprint in the nation. Section 4 of the Finance Act 2019 provides that the Minister (Finance) may by order (of the President) determine what constitutes the significant economic presence of a company other than a Nigerian company. “We have also recently taken a step with respect to a lot of the technology companies that are not represented here but who do huge volumes of business here. “We have had severe economic downturns which of course, imply that we may not be able to collect taxes with the aggressiveness that would ordinarily be expected.