Omodele Adigun
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, of Lagos State has described the new national Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), registration system as the next level in tax administration in Nigeria just as the Executive Chairman of Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS)/Chairman of Joint Tax Board (JTB), Mr Babatunde Fowler, predicted that it would more than double taxpayers’ base to 45million people in the third quarter of 2019.
Sanwo-Olu and Fowler spoke Thursday in Lagos during the South West Regional flag-off ceremony of the TIN Registration System and Consolidated National Taxpayers’ data base.
According to the Lagos governor, the initiative “is a welcome addition to the state of reform, focusing on making identity management and tax administration in Nigeria the next level”.
Fowler in his address explained that the new System would improve the efficiency and output of the entire tax administration process as well as provide a variety of conveniences to both taxpayers and administrators.
He stated: “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.”
The FIRS boss explained that the system is “designed in such a manner that each taxpayer is assigned a unique and universal Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), and it is now possible for any taxpayer to view, retrieve or update his/her tax profile from anywhere 24/7.”
On the potential of the new system, Fowler was confident it would reinforce the efforts of the Buhari administration to build a robust tax-revenue administration system, promote tax friendly environment and ensure a sustainable and inclusive economy for all Nigerians.
He added: “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 people before the end of the third quarter of 2019; Growth in the internally generated revenue (IGR) of states by 46.11 per cent from N800.02 billion in 2016 to N1.16 trillion in 2018; Growth in FIRS collections 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, while non-oil revenue, with a collection of N2.85 trillion accounted for 54 per cent of total revenue collection;the payment by the Federal Government of all outstanding PAYE tax liabilities owed by Federal MDAs to states from 2002 to 2016, totalling N135.8 billion; with a total of N33.13 billion paid to the states in the South-West geopolitical Zone. We hope that this gesture will encourage state governments to also promptly remit all Withholding Taxes and VAT due to the Federation Account.