The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has disclosed that it generated N9.76 billion between July 2016 and April this year, through the State Offices of the Accountant-General (SAG) platform.
The SAG, which was created for the states through the accountant-general’s office on July 1, 2016, is a web-based solution introduced to collect Value Added Tax, Withholding Tax and Stamp Duties at source from all state vendors.
Making the disclosure during a paper presentation at the meeting of the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) in Abuja, the Executive Chairman, FIRS, Mr. Tunde Fowler, said that currently, 31 states had enrolled on the platform and were actively using it.
He listed the states that were yet to enroll on the SAG as Kebbi, Rivers, Lagos, Niger and Sokoto.
Fowler explained that of the N9.76 billion generated through the platform, N838.93 million was collected in 2016, N6.08 billion in 2017, while N2.83 billion had been generated this year so far.
According to him, out of the N838.93 million generated in 2016, N479.31 million was collected as Value Added Tax (VAT) compared to the N359.62 million raked in through Withholding Tax (WHT).
Similarly, the FIRS’ boss disclosed that for the N6.08 billion generated in 2017, N3.07 billion was earned from VAT compared to the N3.01 billion collected from WHT and N252.4 million sourced from Stamp Duty collections.
He reported that in the first four months of the current fiscal year, N1.42 billion was earned from VAT, while N1.41 billion was raked in from WHT and N139.58 million was collected from Stamp Duty payments.
It would be recalled that the FIRS boss had at the 13th General Assembly Meeting of the West African Tax Administration Forum (WATAF) held last month said that automation of tax administration was impacting on the nation’s tax administration positively, including fast-tracking tax compliance.
According to him, the deployment of ICT infrastructure and solutions has helped in raising taxpayers base by an additional four million taxpayers over the last three years.
He explained: “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”, Fowler added.
