FIRS boosts intake by N2.4bn through airline e-VAT platform

Determined to eliminate bottlenecks in retrieving value added tax collected on its behalf, Federal Inland Service (FIRS) Wednesday says it has initiated an automated Value Added Tax (VAT) remittance platform called VAT Collect.

So far, the platform has yielded N2.5 billion from three local airlines since 2014 when the test run commenced.

Director, Information Communications Technology (ICT) of FIRS, Kola Okunola disclosed this in Abuja during a training programme for journalists sponsored by FIRS and organised by Jurnalists.com.

“Arik Air, Air Peace, Azman and others are not yet on this electronic platform. Arik Airline controls up to 70 per cent of the market share. So, by the time Arik and others come on stream, we hope rake up to N10 billion annually from VAT from domestic airlines.

“The deployment of ICT solution will assist revenue agencies to effectively and efficiently discharge their mandate in terms of identification and registration of tax payers, returns and payment processing, audit, accounting and other tax administration functions,” he stated.

He added that there are ongoing implementation of FIRS VAT automation for the power, telecommunications, e-commerce, financial services, oil & gas, insurance, major malls and hospitality sector.

“FIRS Management has recently commenced modalities for implementation of a robust VAT automation mechanism for the aforementioned sectors by liaising with key stakeholders within the industry to help ensure transparency of tax remittance within the industry and help block leakages.”

Okunola also disclosed that a collaboration between the agency and Government Integrated Financial Management System (GIFMIS) has ensured enrolment of 105 ministries, departments and agency (MDAs) enrolled.

“All Contractors working for any of the 105 MDAs must update their bank account details with FIRS, the updated bank accounts in addition with the tax identification number (TIN) are automatically pushed to GIFMIS database for payment purpose.

“GIFMIS will only process contractors payments using the account details pushed from FIRS Tax portal.  Whenever contractors are paid in any of the 105 MDAs, the VAT and WHT will be automatically deducted and remitted to FIRS Account at CBN, simultaneously as the vendor is being paid,” he said.

“You can now register a business end to end without physical contact. It is part of government’s ease of doing business package. We want to do away with physical human contact because that is where bribery comes in. We want this to stop,” he added.

Again, the Director of ICT explained that soon, tax payers would be able to collect their tax clearance certificate electronically.

“The implementation of the FIRS e-TCC verification system has reached an advanced stage and is undergoing users’ acceptance test before deployment to production.

“It provides an e-repository of all TCCs issued by FIRS and enables FIRS Staff and authorized third parties to verify tax clearance certificates thereby reducing the incidence of fraudulent certificates.

“It automatically sends Tax Clearance Certificates to the emails of Taxpayers and also enables them to request for and print their TCCs online.