- FIRS, States Generate N9.76bn, Deploy Web Solution for VAT Payment
Between July 2016 and April this year, the Federal Inland Revenue Service generated a total revenue of N9.76bn through the State Offices of the Accountant-General Platform.
The Executive Chairman, FIRS, Mr. Tunde Fowler, gave the figure during a presentation made to members of the Federation Account Allocation Committee at their meeting held to approve statutory allocation to the three tiers of government.
The SAG is a web-based solution designed to collect Value Added Tax, Withholding Tax and Stamp Duties at source from all state vendors.
It was made available to the states through the accountant-general’s office on July 1, 2016.
In the presentation, which was obtained by our correspondent on Monday, Fowler said currently, 31 states had enrolled on the platform and were actively using it.
He stated that five states had yet to be enrolled on the platform and they are Lagos, Niger, Kebbi, Rivers and Sokoto.
Giving a breakdown of the N9.76bn generated through the platform, the FIRS boss said N838.93m was collected in 2016, N6.08bn in 2017, while N2.83bn had so far been generated this year.
Further analysis of the N838.93m revenue figure for 2016 showed that N479.31m was collected as VAT revenue, while the balance of N359.62m came in through WHT.
For the 2017 revenue figure of N6.08bn, the FIRS boss stated that N3.07bn was earned from VAT, while WHT and stamp duty collections were put at N3.01bn and N252.4m, respectively.
For the first four months of this year, Fowler said N1.42bn was earned from VAT; WHT, N1.41bn; and stamp duty, N139.58m.
Fowler had last month, while speaking at the 13th General Assembly Meeting of the West African Tax Administration Forum, stated that through the deployment of Information and Communication Technology equipment, the service had been able to fast-track tax payment compliance.
He had said, “In Nigeria, we have in the past two years taken the route of increasing the use of ICT in facilitating taxpayers’ compliance and introduced initiatives to improve inter-agency collaboration, all with a view to enhancing tax administration and reduce tax revenue leakages.
“Our efforts in this regard have made an impact and contributed to an increase in the taxpayers’ roll by an additional four million taxpayers.”
