ABSTRACT
It is a well known historical fact that all over the world people regard tax payment as something detestable and a form of punishment especially when it has t do with them parting with their hard earned money. From time immemorial tax masters who are seen having no concern for the welfare at the society forced people to pay taxes. It is because of this hostile regard of taxation that today, tax payers have devised more legitimate means to perpetrate tax offences as it relates to tax payment. The cardinal objective of this research work is to assess the tax offences and penalties in the Nigerian Income Tax Laws ad critically analyze the implementation of these penalties on the tax offences, the efficiency of tax administrative machinery in dealing with such offences and finally to make a survey into other possible ways which may most likely present appreciable improvement of the Nigerian Tax system. The short coming involved in the collection of tax in Nigeria include staffing, inadequate communication system, lack of coordination between government departments, problems of identification of tax payer place of residence, the way tax collected us being spent, lack of coordination from tax payer. The various observations were made. Having considered some of the main set back in our tax system there is need to advance certain recommendations which may bring about some improvement in the system.