By Dipo Olowookere
Executive Chairman of Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Mr Babatunde Fowler, has urged Nigerians to quickly regularise their tax payment before the tax amnesty period closes on Saturday, June 30, 2018.
On July 1, 2017, the federal government opened a grace period for citizens to voluntarily regularise their tax payment without punishment.
It called the programme Voluntary Assets Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS) and it initially ended March 31, 2018. However, many Nigerians pleaded with the government for an extension and the government obliged, pushing the deadline further to June 30, 2018.
At the unveiling of VAIDS Certificate for previously undeclared assets, which coincided with a one-day workshop for tax authorities on the scheme, Mr Fowler said the scheme has so far recovered almost N30 billion.
He explained that of the amount, FIRS collected 90 per cent while states have been responsible for collecting 10 per cent but that the actual amount collected would not be known immediately after the June 30 expiration of VAIDS but after three years when every taxpayer would have finished paying their assessment under the scheme.
At the workshop held on Wednesday in Abuja, the FIRS chief advised states boards of inland revenue to brace up for last minute rush as the deadline for the scheme draws near, saying that since people generally don’t like to pay tax, most of them would wait until the last minute before rushing to tax offices to file their returns.
According to him, the benefit of VAIDS goes beyond just taking advantage of immediate gains as incidences of illicit financial flows, aggressive tax avoidance and outright tax evasion have come into the front burner.
“One of the outcomes of the scheme whether directly or indirectly is the growth of the national taxpayer database from under 14 million pre-2016 numbers to over 19 million in 2018, and we are confident that these numbers will translate into a positive growth in the country tax revenue to GDP ratio when the official percentage for 2017 has been released.
“VAIDS as a project ties in with the Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWO) of the United Kingdom and in m more ways than one shares similar underlying principles with the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance on Tax Matters (MCMAATM) which facilitates international tax cooperation and provides for all possible forms of administrative co-operation between states in the assessment and collection of taxes, in particular with a view to combating tax avoidance and evasion,” he said.
He enumerated the cooperation to include the exchange of information on request, automatically and spontaneously, to assistance in the recovery of foreign tax claims.
In line with the convention, Mr Fowler said efforts were being made towards ensuring that Nigeria commences the Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) with treaty partners in 2019.
As part of efforts to preach voluntary tax compliance to the grassroots, Fowler, who is also Chairman of Joint Tax Board said a partnership has been forged among FIRS, JTB and SMEDAN as a way of bringing operators of small and medium scale enterprises into the tax bracket.
From June 14, the staff of JTB and Federal Ministry of Finance will participate in every Thursday sensitisation exercises in states until June end while “the National Tax Policy Implementation Committee is proposing National Tax Day” to be set aside every year for awareness and sensitisation on tax and tax-related matters.
While cautioning that VAIDS certificate is not an equivalent of tax clearance certificate, Mr Fowler disclosed that some hidden features have been engraved to make it fake and counterfeit-proof.
Adedapo Adesanya