By Omodele Adigun
The President of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN), Dame Olajumoke Simplice, and the Lagos State Auditor General, Mrs Morenike Deile, have charged young tax professionals in the country to embrace Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as job enabler just as the Federal Government has been urged to avoid introducing earmarked taxes to raise revenue.
The duo gave the charge at the weekend in Lagos during the 44th Induction Ceremony of the Institute.
According to Dame Simplice, the young professionals should help develop software applications that can make taxation easy in the country as the “Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) in Lagos State is always the highest among the 36 states in the federation due to the application of knowledge and application of skills.”
Also in advising the Federal Government to make taxes few in number, Dame Simplice said: “Government must avoid the propensity to introduce earmarked taxes with the intention of raising revenues while neglecting the impact that such action would have on businesses and economic activities. As a matter of fact, the thinking of Section 2.2.6 of the Revised National Tax Policy 2017 is that our “taxes should be few in number, broad-based and high revenue-yielding”. In effect, the administration of the taxes should be simplified for ease of enforcement and compliance”.
Explaining to the 285 inductees the reason they should embrace technology, Mrs Deile, who was the Special Guest of Honour, said: “As new entrants, who want to become relevant and blossom, you must see your induction as the beginning and continue to seek requisite knowledge for survival of professionals in the new world order. Or else, you wake up one day and find out that one fintech has created an app that will demystify your current skill in spite of your induction and send us into economic extinction, which I don’t pray for.
Therefore I urge you to embrace technology as it unfolds. Whether we like it or not. I expect you to equally embrace continuous professional development. I also encourage you to embrace growth mindset; I encourage you also to embrace self discipline and this is where our characters,gimmicks, our relationships come to play.”
Mrs Deile also challenged the new entants to break new grounds, saying
“The Nigerian states look saturated and simply, there are no jobs. But amidst this choke, many people arriving our borders are thriving.The experience is from COVID 19 pandemic, it has created a lot of other areas where people are not looking towards.The whole situation has changed. So I expect a lot of things from us as professionals.
The usual focus of most young and fledging new entrant professionals is to shove you and compete with the big league players for the existing clients who were nurtured and currently managed by those big league players. But my admonition to you is to look beyond this. Currently, most government has a new traction of their eligible tax payers in their tax net.Lagos State isan example. And it would be good, and enduring and rewarding business to bring the clients from the hitherto uncaptured areas and bring them into the tax net.That one is a work for those just coming in.
What I am saying is that you don’t compete with the big players that are on the field. There are others areas that are untapped that you should look into.”