FIRS Moves to Capture Additional 25m in Tax Net – TheNigerialawyer

The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has intensified
efforts in implementing some measures to help in realising its
objective of bringing in an additional 25 million more people into
the tax net.

The Executive Chairman, FIRS /Chairman Joint Tax Board (JTB),
Mr. Tunde Fowler, said yesterday in Lagos that the plan would
ensure that the number taxpayers in the country would rise from 20
million to 45 million before the end of the third quarter of
2019.

He spoke at the South-west regional inauguration of the new
national taxpayers identification number (TIN) registration system
and consolidated national taxpayers database.

According to him, the initiative recently launched in Abuja has
the potential not to only increase the taxpayers’ base, but to also
ensure adequate funding of activities of government at all tiers
beyond aid, grants, and borrowing.

He said: “We believe that the new system will reinforce the
laudable efforts of this administration towards building a robust
tax-revenue administration system, promoting a tax-friendly
environment and ensuring a sustainable and inclusive economy for
all Nigerians.

“We are confident of this because the last four years have seen
a number of modest milestones in tax-revenue administration some of
which include, expansion of the tax base from 10 million to 20
million taxpayers with the potential for an increase of up to 45
million before the end of the third quarter of 2019.”

He said under his watch, the FIRS had recorded growth in
Internally Generated Revenue of states by 46.11 per cent, from
N800.02 billion in 2016, to N1.16 trillion in 2018.

Also, growth in FIRS collections has risen by 53.81 per cent,
from N3.30 trillion in 2016 to N5.32 trillion in 2018; with the
2018 total collection of N5.32 trillion being the highest
collection ever in the history of FIRS. Of the figure, he said,
non-oil revenue, with a collection of N2.85 trillion, accounted for
54 per cent of total revenue collection.

Fowler also said the federal government had paid a total of
N135.8 billion being outstanding PAYE tax liabilities owed by
federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to states from
2002 to 2016.

A total of N33.13 billion out of the arrears was paid to the six
states in the South-west.

“We hope that this gesture will encourage state governments to
also promptly remit all withholding taxes and VAT due to the
federation account.

“And a positive movement during the same period by Nigeria up 25
points in the Tax Administration Section of World Bank ‘Ease of
Doing Business’; it is expected that the country would further move
up the rankings by the time the review for 2019 is published,” he
added.

He said the new National TIN Registration System was in line
with his desire.

“We shall be laying a strong foundation to ensure adequate
funding for government at all tiers beyond aid, grants and
borrowing.

“The new system while improving the efficiency and output of the
entire tax administration process, is meant to provide a variety of
convenience to both the taxpayers and the tax administrator.

“It is pertinent to note that the new system guarantees that
each taxpayer’s details are readily available to them at their
fingertips all day/everywhere.

“Furthermore, the new system also possesses the capability to
integrate with relevant agencies and leverage on already captured
data, deploy analytics to discover underlying and correlating
trends and patterns that could lead to better visibility and
increased Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) for all tiers of
government.

“This would significantly reduce the burden of manual taxpayer
information management and by extension grossly crash the cost of
collection,” he said.

In his address at the occasion, the Governor of Lagos State, Mr.
Babajide Sanwo-Olu, applauded the JTB and FIRS over the
initiative.

“This new TIN registration system demonstrates the
transformative power of technology as a significant contributor to
the ease of doing business reforms, both at the national level and
sub national level; and more critically also aligns with our agenda
of leveraging technology to drive change across various economic
sectors,” he said.

On how the innovation would work, the Executive Secretary, JTB,
Mr. Oseni Elamah, said: “The new system is a web-based solution
that offers access to authorised users to initiate TIN request from
the comfort of their homes/offices real-time online, verify their
tax status and print their TIN certificate.

“It is a transparent system that assures timely and accurate
collection and recording of basic identification data. It also
permits the tax administrator to understand its taxpayer base for
effective revenue projections and other planning activities.

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